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THE BLUE RIDGE SERIES 


AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


OTHER BOOKS IN 

THE BLUE RIDGE SERIES 

By Elia W. Peattie 

AZALEA. Clean and wholesome, but lack- 
ing nothing in liveliness. Azalea is a 
winsome mountain lassie who has made 
many friends among girl readers. 

ANNIE LAURIE AND AZALEA. Contin- 
uing Mrs. Peattie ’s success in * ‘ Azalea,’ ’ 
hailed by reviewers and readers as a 
‘ 4 first-class piece of fiction any boy or girl 
between nine and ninety will enjoy.’ ’ 

Each story complete and individual, but 
each dealing with the people and the lo- 
cality Mrs. Peattie ’s charming stories 
have endeared to young readers. 


























































t 
























' 








. 













I 





“ So I lost David,” whispered Mary Cecily; “ I lost my 

little brother.” 



AZALEA AT 
SUNSET GAP 

BY 

ELIA W. £EATTIE 

Author of Azalea; Annie Laurie and Azalea; etc. 

Illustrations by 
Joseph Pierre Nuyttens 



The Reilly & Britton Co. 

Chicago 



Copyright, 1914 
by 

The Reilly & Britton Co. 



$.7r 

Azalea at Sunset Gap 

JUN 22 1914. 

©CLA37G521 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Perfect Chaperon 9 

II Passengers for Bee Tree 29 

III Sunset Gap 47 

IV “ Say, Teacher! ” 67 

V Rowantree Hall 87 

VI Little Brother 103 

VII “Doing Good” 118 

VIII The War 138 

IX The Rescue 156 

X The Rescue, Continued 172 

XI Keefe 192 

XII The Blab Boy 207 

XIII The Hermit Thrush 225 

XIV The Rebel 242 

XV New Hopes 261 




I 


: 




















LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


“ So I lost David,” whispered Mary Cecily; 

“ I lost my little brother.” Frontispiece 

“ I an artist? Mercy, no,” said Azalea. 

“ I’m nothing — just a girl.” 64 K 

There was Paralee, dragging a gaunt woman 
to the door. “ Tell ’em to ’light, ma, and 
come in,” she begged 166 v 

Keefe lifted a languid hand. “ I’ve been 
wanting to tell you for a long time,” he * 
said 230 



AZAT. FA 

AT SUNSET GAP 


CHAPTER I 

THE PERFECT CHAPERON 

Three girls, Azalea McBirney, Annie Laurie 
Pace and Carin Carson rode slowly along the 
red clay road that led no-where-in-particular. 
In fact, these friends were bound for No- 
Where-Xn-Particular, and the way there was 
lined on both sides with blossoming dogwood, as 
white as snow. There were snow-white clouds 
in the sky, too, against a background of glorious 
blue. But the balm in the air suggested any- 
thing rather than snow. It blew back and forth, 
carrying with it delicious perfumes of the 
blossoming shrubs that grew by the roadside and 
within the wood, and touching the cheek like a 
caress. 

The horses seemed to be enjoying themselves 
almost as much as the girls. They stepped 
daintily, throwing back their heads as if they 

9 


10 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


would be pleased if their mistresses would give 
them leave to be off and away down the road, 
and expanding their nostrils to catch the scents 
of the spring-awakened earth. But their mis- 
tresses were too deeply engaged in conversation 
just then to grant them their desire. 

“ You see,” the fairest of them was say- 
ing — the one the others called Carin — “I 
don’t really want to go to Europe with father 
and mother this time. It isn’t as if they were 
going to stay in one place. They’ll be traveling 
the whole time, because, you see, father is going 
on business, and mother is going along to keep 
him company. It wouldn’t be very pleasant, 
would it, to hear mother saying: ‘And now 
what in the world will we do with Carin 
to-day?’ Really, you know, I wouldn’t at all 
enjoy having my name changed to ‘ Little-Carin- 
in-the-Way.’ ” 

The tallest girl, Annie Laurie Pace, laughed 
rather enviously. 

“ Think of giving up a European trip for 
that! ” she cried. 

“ Oh, indeed, I’ll be only too thankful to go 
on some other occasion, Annie Laurie, when 
there’s time to see things or to study. Remem- 


THE PERFECT CHAPERON 11 


ber, I’ve gone twice already; once over the same 
ground that father and mother are going over 
this time. The next time, I hope to stay 
and study, but this summer I want to follow 
the plan we made last summer and go up into 
the mountains and teach school.” 

“ Oh, do you really, Carin?” cried Azalea, 
the third girl. “ I’ve wondered and wondered 
if you’d remember about that! Would your 
father and mother let you? ” 

“ That remains to be seen. One can always 
ask. Do you think Ma McBirney would give 
you permission, Azalea?” 

“ Oh, I think she would. The trouble with 
Ma McBirney is that she’s likely to say 1 yes ’ 
whether my going makes it hard for her or 
not.” 

“ But didn’t she plan,” broke in Annie Laurie, 
“ to visit her cousin down Calhoun way? Pa 
McBirney will be going too, won’t he? ” 

“ I don’t think he could leave the stock and 
the farm. But you see, I thought maybe Mother 
McBirney would want to take me along to — -” 
“ To show off her new daughter,” laughed 
Carin. “ I don’t blame her.” 

“ I never meant anything of the sort,” pro- 


12 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


tested Azalea, coloring. “ But of course, having 
picked me up by the roadside the way she did — 
like a poor stray kitten, you may say — perhaps 
she would like her relatives to see that I 
wasn’t — ” Azalea hesitated again, with the 
mocking eyes of her friends on her. 

“ That you weren’t what? ” demanded Carin 
teasingly. 

But Annie Laurie interrupted with one of the 
practical remarks for which she was celebrated. 

“ It’s all very well for you girls to talk of 
going off to the mountains to teach school,” she 
said, “ but have you any idea of where you’ll go 
and whom you’ll teach? ” 

“ We have a very clear idea,” answered 
Carin. “ We’ll go back to Sunset Gap, where 
we were last summer, and where they need help 
about as badly as they can. I was talking with 
Azalea’s minister, Mr. Summers, and he says he 
doesn’t know of any place where the people are 
in greater need of schooling than they are there. 
You remember the place, Annie Laurie, don’t 
you? We stopped there overnight when we 
were on our camping trip. It took us a long 
time to get there by wagon, but this time we’ll 
take the train as far as Bee Tree and drive only 


THE PERFECT CHAPERON 13 


the last fifteen miles. Mr. Summers says he 
knows a man who will meet us at the station.” 

“ You’ve quite made up your mind to go, 
haven’t you?” asked Annie Laurie. “What a 
girl you are, to be laying out all these plans 
without telling anyone.” 

“ Oh, I haven’t done much,” protested Carin, 
“ only, when I happened to meet Mr. Summers, 
I talked it over with him. You see, there are 
men and women up there on Dundee mountain 
who don’t even know their letters, and teaching 
the children will be like carrying civilization to 
them,” said Carin earnestly, meaning very much 
more than she said but trusting her sympathetic 
friends to understand. 

“ It’s the very kind of work that I want to do 
above everything else,” declared Azalea with 
an earnestness no less than that of her friend. 
“ Oh, Annie Laurie, if we go, do come with us ! 
You’d make the best teacher of us all. You’re 
so firm, and you always think out beforehand 
what you’re going to do.” 

“ The best way for me to live up to that fine 
reputation,” retorted Annie Laurie, “ is by stay- 
ing at home. This is my last chance for learning 
to manage my dairy, for Sam Disbrow, who 


14 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


has been taking almost all of the responsibility, 
is leaving me next October for his two years at 
Rutherford Academy. I’m so happy to think 
he’s going, after all the disappointments and 
troubles he’s had.” 

“ But couldn’t your Aunt Adnah look after 
the dairy for a couple of months? I thought 
she was a fine business woman,” Carin persisted. 

“ Oh, Carin, father’s death was a much greater 
shock to her than to any of the rest of us. She 
oughtn’t to have much care. Anyway, the dairy 
is my business now that father is gone, and I’m 
anxious to learn every detail of it. I understand 
now about keeping the books, but I am making 
a study of raising fodder and preserving it, and 
of feeding the cattle and marketing the milk. 
Oh, it’s a huge undertaking.” 

Annie Laurie drew a deep breath. 

“Yes, I suppose it is,” sighed Carin sym- 
pathetically. “ Isn’t it queer, when you come to 
think of it, that work had to be brought into 
the world? Why weren’t we made like the 
birds, so that we could hop around awhile, and 
sing awhile, and go to sleep under a nice dry 
leaf?” 


THE PERFECT CHAPERON 15 


“ Well, life isn’t that way,” said Annie Laurie 
in the solemn tones the Paces sometimes used. 
“ We have to work for what we get, and Pm 
glad we do. Life is more interesting just the 
way it is.” 

“ I like to keep busy myself,” admitted Carin, 
“ but if anyone came up to me and told me that 
what I was doing was work , I believe I’d fall in 
my tracks.” She gave a silvery laugh. 

“ After you’ve taught school a week, you’ll 
not need anyone to point out that what you are 
doing is work,” Annie Laurie returned. “ Aza- 
lea, have you spoken yet to Pa and Ma McBirney 
about going? ” 

Azalea gave a little chuckle, half of amuse- 
ment, half of affection, as her friend spoke the 
names of the good mountain people who had 
taken Azalea into their home when she was 
orphaned. 

“Naturally, I haven’t,” she said, “because 
until this hour I didn’t know Carin was really 
planning for it. And now I’ll have to approach 
the subject cautiously. You know how it is 
with my dear pretend-parents; they’re mountain 
people and don’t like to be frightened out of 


16 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


their wits by having a question hurled at them. 
You have to lead them up to it, like you would 
a nervous horse.” 

“ Don’t say ‘ like you would,’ Azalea,” 
pleaded Carin. “You know Miss Parkhurst 
never lets you. Say ‘ as you would,’ Zalie.” 

“ As you would,” breathed Azalea meekly. 

“ Well,” said Annie Laurie, “ it’s a grand 
plan and I hope it will come true, though I’m 
not perfectly in love with the idea of having you 
girls go off for the summer and leave me. But 
never mind that. Let’s have a gallop ! ” 

She flicked the reins on the neck of her pretty 
mare, and the animal, delighted at the signal, 
bounded away as playfully as a kitten. Like 
kittens, too, the ponies on which the other girls 
were mounted followed after. As they rode, the 
blooms of the dogwood rained about them and 
the laughter of the girls mingled with the nicker- 
ing of the horses. 

At the ford, two miles down the valley, they 
drew rein. 

“ It’s time I was getting home,” said Annie 
Laurie. “ How about you, Azalea? Do you 
go up the mountain to-night? ” 

“ No, I’m staying with Carin. That’s getting 


THE PERFECT CHAPERON 17 


to be my habit on Friday nights. Mother 
McBirney comes down Saturday for her trad- 
ing, and I meet her at the village and then we 
go home together.” 

And now while they canter back down the 
lovely Valley of Lee in the bland light of the 
closing day, let us tell something of their history 
to such readers as have not met them before. 

Azalea McBirney did not bear the name to 
which she was born. She was Azalea Knox, the 
daughter of a ne’er-do-well son of a fine family, 
and of a loving-hearted mother who had left 
her home and friends for the sake of the man 
she married. The young mother had fallen 
upon such evil days that at last, to provide her 
little girl with the necessaries of life, she had 
traveled with a band of sorry actors who jour- 
neyed from town to town in squalid, covered 
wagons. Sick in body and shamed in spirit, she 
died on the road in front of the mountain cabin 
where Thomas and Mary McBirney lived. 
They had taken Azalea into their home, where 
she shared their care and affection with Jim 
McBirney, their only living child. 

Carin Carson was the daughter of Charles 
and Lucy Carson, Northerners of wealth, who, 


18 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


having lost their three sons in a tragic manner, 
had come to the beautiful little mountain town 
of Lee, to forget, if possible, amid its beautiful 
surroundings and peaceful life, the pain which 
had made their old home impossible to them. 
They had interested themselves greatly in Aza- 
lea, had offered to make her their adopted 
daughter, and upon her decision to stay with her 
devoted foster mother, had given her the privi- 
lege of sharing with Carin the excellent instruc- 
tion received from Miss Parkhurst, Carin’s 
governess. 

A warm friendship had developed between 
the girls, and it was a sharp disappointment to 
them when Mrs. Carson, who thought they 
were growing too self-centered and indifferent 
to other young folk, brought into their classroom 
Annie Laurie Pace, the daughter of the dairy- 
man at Lee. It was only after Annie Laurie’s 
revolt from their selfishness that they realized 
the need they had of her as well as the privilege 
that it was to her — a girl too advanced for the 
district school — to share their opportunities 
with them. Troubles came to Annie Laurie. 
She lost her father and her fortune; but these 
misfortunes only bound the three girls closer in 


THE PERFECT CHAPERON 19 


“ the triple alliance ” which they had formed. 
When, finally Annie Laurie’s fortune was recov- 
ered by a singular chance, they settled down 
into happy enjoyment of their school days. 

The previous summer had found them 
together with their elders upon a camping trip 
which was to remain in the minds of all of them 
as one of the most delightful experiences of 
their lives. On this excursion they had seen 
something of the lives of the mountaineers of the 
Blue Ridge far back from the railroads and 
the main routes of travel, and had resolved that 
at the first opportunity they would return to 
pass on to these untaught, friendly, wistful folk 
some of the knowledge which had been bounti- 
fully given them. But this thought had 
slipped out of sight during the winter, for each 
girl had been much occupied after her own 
fashion. Now, with the return of summer, their 
thoughts turned naturally to the mountains. 
Back of their desire to be useful to their less 
fortunate neighbors, was the hunger for life in 
the open. They dreamed of the low-lying val- 
leys bathed in purple mist, of the flaming azalea 
burning on the higher slopes, of the innumer- 
able flowers springing to life along the adven- 


20 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


turous pathways, of the wild beauty of the 
storms, and the ever-new miracle of sunrise and 
sunset. 

Annie Laurie said good-bye, and Carin and 
Azalea turned in at the great gate of the Shoals, 
the beautiful home built by Colonel Atherton, 
the grandfather of Azalea. But Azalea entered 
it now, a poor girl, the foster daughter of sim- 
ple mountain folk, and it was Carin’s parents 
who owned the fine old place and who lived 
there in a very different sort of state from that 
which had obtained in Colonel Atherton’s day. 
His thought had been all of his own indulgence 
and glory. Charles Carson and his wife had 
their greatest happiness in sharing their pros- 
perity with others. They had built up a trade 
for the handicraft of the mountain people, had 
lent a hand to several of the enterprises in the 
town of Lee, and were the chief supporters of a 
school for the mountain children. 

When Mustard and Paprika, the ponies, had 
been led away by the stable boy, the girls ran 
up the wide sweeping stairs to Carin’s room 
to dress for dinner, and as they brushed their 
hair and changed their frocks, they talked of 
how they could best approach their parents 


THE PERFECT CHAPERON 21 


with their rather madcap plan of going up into 
the mountains. In the midst of their talk Mrs. 
Carson came into the room. She kissed them 
in her gentle way and then held Azalea off with 
one white jewelled hand, eyeing her with 
quizzical affection. Azalea returned her look 
adoringly, for Carin’s mother was the girl’s ideal 
of what a “ beautiful lady ” should be. The 
faint breath of violet perfume which floated 
from her gowns, the satin sheen of her waving 
hair, her indescribably soft and musical voice, 
her gestures, her laugh, all served Azalea as 
the standard by which she measured charm in 
women. 

“ You two have been plotting something,” 
declared the lady. “ I can read conspiracy in 
your faces — such a pair of telltale faces as you 
have! Come! What is it?” 

She drew Azalea closer to her, and the girl 
nestled her face for a moment against Mrs. 
Carson’s soft cheek. 

“ It’s the mountains, mamma Carson,” she 
replied. “ Carin and I want to go up there 
and teach school the way we planned last sum- 
mer. You rememlJer, don’t you? ” 

“ So that’s it! Well, that’s not a very dark 


22 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


conspiracy. There wouldn’t be any objection 
if we weren’t going abroad.” 

“ But it’s because you are going abroad, 
mamma,” cried Carin, “ and because I don’t 
really want to go, that this plan seems so — so 
timely.” 

Well, that was where the argument began. It 
was continued at the dinner table; it was taken 
up the next day with the McBirneys as soon as 
ever they showed their faces in the village, so 
that they were not, after all, allowed to approach 
the subject in that gradual and cautious manner 
advised by Azalea; it was carried to the Rev- 
erend Absalom Summers and his wife Barbara. 
Even Jonathan Summers, aged three, took a 
hand in it by pulling Azalea’s skirt and saying: 
“ Don’t go ! Don’t go.” 

Mr. Carson explained the situation to Mr. 
Summers after this fashion: “ It’s not that I 
am really so keen about taking Carin on this 
trip; and I certainly have no objection to her 
making herself useful, but going to live upon a 
wild mountain among wilder people doesn’t 
appeal to me as the best thing for young girls 
to do. I doubt if it would be safe.” 

“ Safe?” roared the Reverend Absalom, who 


THE PERFECT CHAPERON 23 


had been a mountain man himself and to whom 
the honor of the mountaineers was dear. “ Safe, 
Mr. Carson! Do you mean to insinuate that 
those girls wouldn’t be as safe on Dundee Moun- 
tain as here in the town of Lee? Are you not 
aware that women are honored and protected in 
the remotest regions of our mountains? ” 

Mr. Carson enjoyed the outbreaks of his 
friend and was not at all put out at having pro- 
voked one. His smile led Mr. Summers to 
suppose that his eloquence had not been vigorous 
enough, so he resumed in a louder tone of voice : 

“ We may do a good many things up on the 
mountain that aren’t generally approved of by 
people living in the valleys; we may quarrel 
among ourselves, and we may forget to pay the 
government the tax on our whiskey; we may 
be lazy — we are lazy, if you like; we may have 
different ideas of enjoyment from those you 
have, but if you think there is any human 
panther among us who — ” 

Mr. Carson roared with laughter. 

“No, Summers,” he cried, waving his hands 
to stop the stream of protest, “ I don’t think 
so — I don’t think anything. But you know 
yourself that if the girls go up to Sunset Gap, 


24 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


they’ve got to have a reliable, sensible, agreeable 
woman along with them. Now where shall we 
find anyone like that? She must like roughing 
it, yet she’ll have to be a refined, companionable 
woman. She must know how to keep the pantry 
stocked, do the cooking, and yet be a restraint 
to our impulsive young people. Such a person 
is hard to find.” 

Mr. Summers had to admit that it was. His 
little wife, Barbara, who wanted terribly to go 
with the girls but who was unwilling to leave 
her preacher-man, had to admit it also, though 
she usually was the first to think of the answer 
to any puzzle. Finally, Mr. Carson put it this 
way: 

“ McBirney and his wife are willing Azalea 
should go, providing the proper protectress is 
found. Mrs. Carson and I feel the same way. 
Now, Summers, I ask you, isn’t it up to the girls 
to find the right chaperon? Why not leave it 
in their hands? Let them produce a woman of 
good sense, refinement, courage, love of adven- 
ture mixed with judgment, well-educated, accus- 
tomed to killing snakes, friendly to the moun- 
tain people, with a religious nature and a perfect 
disposition — no objection to a little knowledge 


THE PERFECT CHAPERON 25 


of medicine thrown in — and they can go.” 

The Rev. Absalom threw back his head and 
laughed, and his laugh was entirely out of pro- 
portion to the size of the little house in which 
he and his wife and his yellow-headed son lived 
and had their being, and in which they were 
now entertaining their friends the Carsons and 
the McBirneys. 

But Carin and Azalea arose to the situation. 

“ It’s an hour before father and mother are 
to start up the mountain for home,” said Azalea, 
taking the dare gayly; “ so we’ve time to go out 
and look around.” 

“ Why not? ” demanded Carin. “ I’m great 
at finding four-leaf clovers. Why shouldn’t I 
find the perfect chaperon?” Half in expecta- 
tion, half in despair, the two of them ran off 
down the sunny street, followed by the applause 
of Barbara Summers’ small brown hands. 

“ First,” said Carin, when they were beyond 
the hearing of their elders, “ let’s go tell Annie 
Laurie.” 

“ Of course,” agreed Azalea. “ Even if she 
doesn’t know of the right person, she must be 
told what we’re doing.” 

It was not far from the Summers home to the 


26 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


rather gaunt house which Annie Laurie Pace 
had inherited. The girls made their way between 
the well-kept fields in which the fodder was 
raised for Annie Laurie’s fine herd of cattle — 
the celebrated Pace herd, which provided milk 
for half the county — and so came by carefully 
tended roads to their friend’s home. 

Annie Laurie had been training vines to grow 
over the austere house, and had made flower 
gardens in the yard which until recently had 
worn a forbidding and business-like appearance. 
There was even an arbor about which clematis 
and wisteria were beginning to climb, and here, 
sparsely sheltered by shade, sat Miss Zillah 
Pace, the younger and gentler of Annie Laurie’s 
two aunts. There was a wistful look on her 
face and her hands lay idly in her lap, but when 
she saw the two girls she got to her feet and 
came swiftly forward to meet them. 

“ Oh,” she cried, “ how very nice to see you 
on such a beautiful day! Everyone ought to be 
young to-day, oughtn’t they? I declare, I don’t 
see how I’m ever going to give up and be 
middle-aged if it means sitting around here at 
home season in and season out.” 

“ Were you such a very giddy girl, Miss 


THE PERFECT CHAPERON 27 


Zillah?” asked Carin in amusement, casting an 
eye at Miss Zillah’s staid frock and prim little 
curls, and thinking how amusing it was that 
such a settled little person should be able to think 
of herself as adventurous. 

“ Not on the outside,” returned Miss Zillah. 
“ When I was young I had a very great sense of 
duty, and there were many opportunities for me 
to exercise it. But do you know, I’m kind of 
worn out doing my duty, and I’d give anything 
if I were going away on some such jaunt as we 
went on last year.” She looked at the girls 
appealingly, and then concluded with a shy 
little smile, “ I suppose you think I’m a dread- 
fully silly old woman.” 

But Carin had clasped Azalea’s arm in a 
fierce grasp. 

“ The perfect chaperon,” she whispered, 
“ made to order! ” 

“ Found in fifteen minutes,” whispered back 
Azalea. 

Miss Zillah, who caught their rapid exchange 
of confidence, looked perplexed. 

“ Oh, don’t think us rude, Miss Zillah,” 
pleaded Carin. “We’re not; we’re merely 
excited. You see, we’ve just made a discovery.” 


28 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ Have you, my dears?” asked Miss Zillah. 
“ Come sit down in the arbor and tell me about 
it.” 

“ I’m afraid we’re almost too elated to sit 
down,” laughed Azalea. “ You see, what we 
have discovered, Miss Zillah, is you.” 

“ But it’s a long time since you landed on my 
continent,” said Miss Zillah. 

“ Yes, but when we first saw you we made the 
same mistake that Columbus did. We thought 
you were some one else.” 

“Who did you think I was? Who am I?” 
laughed the nice old lady, glad of an excuse to 
be talking happy nonsense. 

“ Why, we thought you were just Annie 
Laurie’s aunt,” explained Azalea, “ but now 
we’re wondering if you’re not our chaperon. 
We’re going up to Sunset Gap again; this time 
to teach school. And we must have a perfect 
chaperon, else we’ll not be allowed to go.” 

“ And you’re she! ” cried Carin, flinging her 
arms impulsively about Miss Zillah’s soft neck. 
“You know you are! Say you’ll come, Miss 
Zillah, and then we can run back and tell our 
people that everything is all right.” 


CHAPTER II 
PASSENGERS FOR BEE TREE 

Three weeks later there was a notable gather- 
ing at the railroad station at Lee. The Carsons 
were there, the Paces, the McBirneys, including 
Jim, in a new straw hat, Dick Heller, just up 
from the Rutherford Academy, Sam Disbrow, 
happy now and full of wholesome activity, Hi 
Kitchell and his sister, and ever so many others, 
some black and some white. The baggage man 
was oppressed with a sense of the importance 
of the luggage he was to put on the train, for it 
included, as he realized full well, the summer 
outfit of Miss Zillah Pace and her charges. 
That is, if Azalea and Carin, so important and 
full of business, so suddenly grown up as it 
seemed, and their own mistresses, could possibly 
be looked upon as “ charges.” 

“ Wire Mr. Summers if anything goes wrong, 
Carin,” Mr. Carson was commanding. 

“Mind you write me everything — simply 
everything,” warned Annie Laurie. 

29 


30 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ You will find it very profitable to keep a 
diary, Sister Zillah,” Miss Adnah Pace 
commented. 

“ It’s a burning shame we’re not all going,” 
little Mrs. Summers sighed. “ I’m sure the 
mountain air is just what Jonathan needs.” 

Jonathan, who was toddling from friend to 
friend, sociably offering the words: “ Don’t 
go ” as an example of his conversational powers, 
really did not seem to need much of anything. 

“ If you all went,” broke in the Reverend 
Absalom Summers, “ we’d have just as much of 
a town up at the Gap as we have down here in 
the valley, and then that would spoil it all, and 
we’d have to light out again. Queer, isn’t it, 
how we all swarm to a town and then hike out 
to the solitude, and fret wherever we are? ” 

“ Oh, there’s the train,” cried Azalea. “ Oh, 
mother McBirney, dear, I’ve got to go. You’re 
sure you won’t mind? ” 

“ It’s pretty late in the day to be thinking 
about that,” said Ma McBirney with laughing 
tremulousness. “ You take care yo’self, Zalie, 
and look after Miss Zillah and Miss Carson, 
and yo’r pa and me’ll be all right. Do yo’r 
level best to pass on the l’arnin’ to them pore 


PASSENGERS FOR BEE TREE 31 


untaught folks, Zalie. We’ll be honin’ for you, 
but we’re mighty proud that yo’re able to be 
a help to others.” 

Azalea blushed violently. 

“ Oh, mother,” she whispered, “ the people 
will hear you and they’ll think I’m a regular 
missionary! ” 

“ Shake hands, girl,” cried Pa McBirney. 
“ Here’s the train.” 

So they were off. Miss Zillah had a seat to 
herself and her bags and boxes. Carin and 
Azalea sat together, and for a time said very 
little. Both were a bit tearful — Carin particu- 
larly, at the thought that her parents were going 
over-seas. But after a while they grew interested 
in the flowering mountain side and the little 
cabins tucked away on the shelves of the moun- 
tains. Azalea even caught a glimpse of the 
McBirney cabin lying so confidently on its high 
ledge — the cabin through whose hospitable 
• door she had entered to find the only home she 
knew. 

To keep the tears from getting out beyond her 
lids, where they were swimming at rising flood, 
she turned her attention to the people with her 
in the car. Opposite was an old woman in a sun 


32 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


bonnet, chewing her snuff stick and staring 
straight before her, without, apparently, the 
slightest curiosity about anyone. In front 
of her sat a little girl of seven, who evi- 
dently was traveling quite alone. She was just 
the sort of a child Azalea liked — though, come 
to think of it, Azalea had never seen any sort of 
a child she did not like. This one, however, 
was especially attractive, no doubt about that. 
She had purplish-blue eyes, like pansies, and 
dark hair and lashes so long they swept her 
cheeks. She looked both shy and innocently 
bold, both plain and pretty, both graceful and 
awkward, both wistful and mischievous. Aza- 
lea decided that when she grew up she probably 
would be lovely. 

She kept glancing at the girls as if she would 
like to be acquainted with them, and finally 
Azalea motioned for her to come over to their 
seat. The little girl got up at the first crook of 
Azalea’s finger and crossed the aisle, smiling 
and coloring as she came. 

“ You don’t like sitting all alone very well, 
do you?” Azalea asked. “I think it’s horrid 
traveling in the cars with no one to talk to. 


PASSENGERS FOR BEE TREE 33 


Don’t you think I’m lucky to have my friend 
with me? ” 

“ Yes’m,” said the little girl in a very sweet 
voice. Then after a pause: “ I couldn’t bring 
any of my friends with me.” 

She seemed to think she would have been the 
one to do the “ bringing.” It evidently did not 
occur to her that she would have been 
“ brought.” 

“ I’ll turn over this seat if you like,” said 
Azalea, “ and then you may sit with us. Mayn’t 
she, Carin?” 

“ Why, of course,” said Carin. She got up 
to turn over the seat, but it stuck and rocked 
and acted in a singularly perverse way, as car 
seats sometimes will, and at that a lad who had 
been sitting with his nose buried in a book, arose 
and came quickly to her assistance. 

He was so slender and graceful, his dark eyes 
were so friendly and quick to make responses, 
that the girls and Miss Zillah could not help 
staring at him for a few seconds with surprise 
and admiration in their eyes. In America lads 
and young men often have a way of looking like 
grown men before their time. They are too 


34 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


business-like, too responsible, too seasoned. But 
this boy was as eager, as gentle as the girls 
themselves. He not only had not grown up — 
though he was as tall as the majority of men — 
but he looked as if he had no intention of doing 
so for some time to come. He held his cap in 
his hand, and showed a beautifully shaped head 
overgrown by a short crop of dark curls which 
he had, apparently, tried in vain to straighten. 

“ That seat,” he said with a sudden smile, 
showing two rows of teeth that could be 
described in no other way save as “ gleaming,” 
“ has a bad disposition.” 

“ Yes, hasn’t it? ” said Carin. “ But I’m sorry 
to have troubled you.” 

“ It’s no trouble,” he said, “ for me to shake 
the cussedness out of anything that acts like 
that. It’s a pleasure.” 

He gave the seat such a shake as irritable 
parents give to naughty children, and got it over 
in place somehow, and he settled the little girl 
in it. 

“ Have you anything that you’d like to have 
brought over here, Miss Rowantree? ” he asked. 

“ Please,” said the little girl, “ my dolly and 
my package.” 


PASSENGERS FOR BEE TREE 35 


She spoke with a fine distinctness and with a 
charming accent. 

“ She’s English, I’m sure,” whispered Carin 
to Azalea. 

The doll, a battered but evidently well-loved 
affair, was brought, and a box held in a shawl 
strap, which no doubt contained the small per- 
son’s wearing apparel. 

“ But how did you know her name was Miss 
Rowantree?” Azalea asked, or started to ask. 
Before she had finished her question she saw on 
the child’s dark blue reefer a piece of cloth, 
neatly sewn in place, and with these words on 
it in indelible ink: 

“ Constance Rowantree. Please see that she 
leaves the train at Rowantree Road.” 

“ You’re terrible young to be traveling alone, 
child,” said Aunt Zillah seriously. “ How ever 
could they let you do it?” 

“ I got so homesick they had to,” explained 
the child with equal gravity. “ Nobody could 
come with me, so I had to come alone. I don’t 
mind,” she added valiantly. 

“ I hope you reach your home before dark,” 
went on Aunt Zillah, quite at ease now that she 
had somebody to worry about. 


36 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ Oh, yes, ma’am,” the child answered, “ I’ll 
get home a long time before sundown, and my 
father will meet me.” She spoke in such a slow 
and particular fashion that she made them all 
smile. 

“ That’s all right then,” said Azalea cheer- 
fully, who was afraid the little girl was having 
some fears manufactured for her. “ Now, please 
tell me the name of your doll.” 

“ It’s Mary Cecily Rowantree, after my 
mamma,” said the little girl. “ Isn’t that a 
pretty name? ” 

“ Pretty as a song,” said the youth, who was 
still standing by them. 

“ I wish it was my name,” the little girl added. 
“ I’m only named Constance.” 

“ But that’s a lovely name,” Carin told her. 
“ It means that you will always have to be true 
to those you love.” 

“ I love ever so many people,” said the child. 
“ And I’m going to keep right on loving them 
as long as I live.” 

They chatted on for a while, as congenial folk 
will on the train. No doubt if Azalea had been 
left to herself she would frankly have told her 
new acquaintances just where she and her friends 


PASSENGERS FOR BEE TREE 37 


were going and what they intended to do, but 
the more reserved Carin and the cautious Miss 
Zillah forbade, by their eyes, any such confi- 
dences. So, after Constance had finished telling 
how a lady named Miss Todd has come to live 
with them for a while, and how she had taken 
her — Constance — home with her, and how 
Constance had stayed till the “ spell ” of home- 
sickness conquered her, no more confidences 
were made save by the young man. 

“ This country’s new to me,” he told them. 
“ But I’ve heard a lot about it, so I came up to 
see what it was like. You see, I’m a painter. 
At least if I keep on working for the next twenty 
years maybe I’ll become one. I’ve been sketch- 
ing on the islands off the Carolina coast, and 
now I’m going to see what I can do with the 
mountains. I painted some pictures of the sea 
that were so bad the tide didn’t come in for 
three days and maybe I can make the mountains 
so enraged that they’ll skip like lambs. Any- 
way, it will be fun.” 

“Where do you get off?” asked Azalea 
cheerfully. 

“ Hanged if I know,” the youth replied, turn- 
ing on them again the radiance of his beautiful 


38 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


smile. “ Any place that looks wild enough will 
get me.” 

“ It’s wild at Rowantree Road,” said the little 
Constance gravely, looking up from under her 
long lashes with almost the expression of some 
woods creature. “ We never see anybody 
hardly. You can’t think how wild it is! ” 

Time went on and in spite of Miss Zillah’s 
reserved manner, all of the young people were 
beginning to enjoy themselves and each other 
when the train came to a sudden stop. It was so 
sudden that it threw Constance forward on 
Carin’s lap and hurled the contents of the over- 
head carry-alls down on the heads of the 
travelers. 

“ Oh! ” cried Constance, righting herself, “ I 
hope Mary Cecily isn’t broken! ” 

“ What is it?” asked Miss Zillah anxiously, 
addressing herself to the only man in the party. 

But the young man was already out of the car, 
making investigations, and he was followed by 
four traveling men who plunged out of the 
smoking room. 

“ Oh, let’s go see — ” began Azalea. But 
Miss Zillah’s hand was on her arm. 


PASSENGERS FOR REE TREE 39 


“ Sit still, my dear. The gentlemen will look 
to the matter,” she said with the confidence of 
the old-time woman. 

“ Of course they will,” protested Azalea, half- 
vexed and half-laughing. “ They’ll have all the 
fun of seeing to it. I want some of the fun 
myself.” 

“No doubt the engine has broken down,” said 
Carin calmly, “ and you couldn’t do anything 
about that, could you, Azalea? ” 

Constance wriggled out of her seat and started 
for the door, but Miss Zillah caught and held 
her gently. 

“ You are much better in here, my dear,” she 
said. 

The child, rebuked, turned her attention to 
picking up the articles that had fallen from their 
racks. There were, in the seat where their new 
acquaintance had been sitting, a knapsack and 
an artist’s kit, marked K. O’C. in large black 
letters on the canvas. 

“ K stands for Kitty,” said Miss Constance. 
“ O stands for Oliver. C stands for Constance.” 

The young man came rushing back into the 
car, and he overheard. 


40 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ K stands for Keefe,” he declared, “ and O’C 
for O’Connor. That’s myself, such as I am. 
The engine has broken down — ” 

“ Just as I thought,” murmured Carin. 

“ And we’re likely to be tied up here for 
hours.” 

“ It is a single track, I think,” said Miss Zillah 
with forced calm. “ Are we not in danger of a 
collision? Would you advise me, sir, to take 
the young ladies out into the open air? ” 

“ Why not? ” asked Keefe O’Connor, packing 
articles back in the racks and generally settling 
the car. “ We may as well break up the time 
a little.” He happened to look at Constance 
and caught a look of dismay on the face that 
until now had been so cheerful. 

“Well, Miss Rowantree, what is it?” he 
asked. 

“ If we stay here for hours,” said the wise little 
girl, “ it will be jet dark when I get to my place.” 
Her lips quivered a little. 

“ Come dark, come light,” said the young man, 
“ you’ll be all right, Constance Rowantree. Just 
you trust to me. Anyway, worry never yet 
mended anything.” 

But plenty of worrying was done on that train 


PASSENGERS FOR BEE TREE 41 


first and last that afternoon. The engineer 
worried and the conductor worried, the brake- 
men had their own troubles, and the passengers 
fretted as hard as they could. Carin and Azalea 
walked up and down the track with Miss Zillah 
and Constance, and tried to think they liked the 
adventure. 

“ Mr. Summers said that Mr. McEvoy would 
meet us no matter what happened,” said Miss 
Zillah, “ and I take it that what Mr. Summers 
says is so.” 

“ Of course it’s so,” Azalea assured her. 
“ We’ll certainly be met, Miss Zillah. But 
even if we shouldn’t be, there’d be some place for 
us to stay. There are houses at Bee Tree, aren’t 
there? Or do you think there is only a tree? ” 

“ Oh, there are houses,” put in Constance. 
“ Daddy goes there to get his letters and the 
groceries.” 

“ Why don’t you get off at Bee Tree with 
us? ” asked Azalea. “ Then we can look after 
you.” 

“ Oh, no,” said the child. “ Daddy wrote 
that I was to get off at Rowantree Road. It’s 
ever so much nearer our house. I must do just 
what papa said. If he was there waiting for me 


42 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


and I stayed on the train, he’d feel dread-ful-ly.” 

She made a very long word of “ dreadfully,” 
separating the syllables in her queer way. 

The conductor of the train overheard what 
was being said. 

“ I tell you what it is, Miss Constance,” he 
said: “ I’ll have to see your father standing right 
there before me ready to take you in charge 
before I’ll let you off in those woods alone. It 
will be plumb night before we get to your place.” 

“Now, see here, conductor,” said one of the 
traveling men, “ let one of us boys get off with 
the little girl. It won’t do at all for her to be 
dropped in the woods.” 

“ Draw lots to see who does it,” proposed 
another of the traveling men, and began tearing 
up pieces of paper. “ Here, you fellows! ” 

But Keefe O’Connor objected. 

“Not a bit of it,” he cried. “You men are 
on business, and it throws you out of your whole 
week’s schedule if you miss a town. I’m out 
gunning for scenery. Want to paint it, you 
understand. I have no destination — only a 
mileage ticket. Let me get off with the little 
girl. If her father is on hand, I can swing back 


PASSENGERS FOR BEE TREE 43 


on the train again. If he isn’t, she can guide me 
to her house.” 

“ It’s a terribly long way,” said Constance 
dolefully. “ It’s right through the woods. You 
haven’t a lantern with you, have you? ” 

“ No,” admitted Keefe, “ I’ve no lantern, but 
I’m sure we’d make our way. Didn’t you prom- 
ise me you wouldn’t worry? ” 

“ No, sir,” said the child seriously, “ I don’t 
think I promised.” 

There really was only one person on the train 
who could be said to refrain, and that was the 
mountain woman with the snuff stick. 

“ I’ve been a-studying nigh on three months 
about going to see my son Jake,” she said, “ and 
now it don’t seem to matter much when I do git 
thar. I’ve got shet of the work to home for a 
spell, anyhow. I’ve kep’ at it twelve year with- 
out a let-up, and setting by a while won’t 
trouble me none.” 

No one had anything to eat, for all had 
counted on reaching their destination by supper 
time, so that sundown saw a group of hungry 
people with only Miss Zillah Pace’s generous 
supply of cookies to comfort them. But at last 


44 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


the engine was repaired in such a way that the 
engineer “ reckoned it would hold/’ and the 
train moved cautiously on through the darkness, 
delayed here and there at sidings, and throwing 
trains all along the line out of their time 
schedule. 

There was silence in the car. The traveling 
men no longer told their stories; Aunt Zillah 
nodded but dared not doze for fear of missing 
her station; the mountain woman brooded 
patiently, caring little, it seemed, as to what fate 
might have in store for her; and little Constance 
slept in Azalea’s arms. Carin was supremely 
patient and quiet; and the bright eyes of Keefe 
O’Connor gleamed now and then from under 
the rim of his cap, which was pulled low over 
his face, and behind which he was occupied in 
thinking his own thoughts. 

But he was alert enough when the conductor 
came to warn him that they were approaching 
Rowantree Road. He and Azalea between them 
got the little girl awake, and with his packages 
and hers, the friends saw him swing off the 
train in the black murk. The conductor’s lan- 
tern threw a little glow around him where he 


PASSENGERS FOR BEE TREE 45 

stood holding the hand of Constance fast in his 
own. 

“ Mighty good thing you’re here, sir,” they 
heard the conductor say. “ I certainly would 
have been put out if I’d had to leave the little 
one in the dark by herself.” 

“ Oh, my daddy is somewhere,” Constance 
reassured him in her high ringing tones; and as 
they pulled out they heard her voice calling 
“Daddy! Daddy!” 

“There’s a light!” cried Aunt Zillah 
excitedly. “ See, it’s just up the track a way. 
Her father must be there after all. Really, it’s 
the greatest relief to me.” 

The traveling men seemed to be relieved, too. 
So was the conductor; so, no doubt, were the 
brakemen. No one knows what the engineer 
felt. He probably was praying that his repairs 
would hold out. The mountain woman took 
out her snuff stick again. Just then the con- 
ductor called: 

“ All out for Bee Tree.” 

Azalea caught at her parcels; Carin gathered 
up hers more deliberately; Aunt Zillah arose 
in a flutter, dropping things here and there which 
the conductor and the youngest of the travel- 


46 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


ing men picked up, and presently they were oft 
in the mellow gloom. But it was a gloom with 
a lantern-light to mitigate it. 

“ Be you the ladies Mr. Summers writ 
about?” a cordial voice inquired. “I’m 
McEvoy. Step along this way, please.” 


CHAPTER III. 


SUNSET GAP 

The night was as bland as it was dark. Neither 
stars nor moon lighted the way of the travelers, 
but Miles McEvoy’s horses had no need of these 
celestial bodies to help them keep the road. 
They knew it, though it swept around Simms’ 
barn and took the cut-off by Decker’s hill, and 
plunged straight through Ravenel’s woods. 
They did not tremble as, climbing and still 
climbing, it carried them along the edge of a 
gorge; nor did they quake when their hoofs 
beat on a resounding bridge, though there were 
but planks between them and an abyss. 

Dew-wet branches touched the faces of those 
who sat in the sagging old wagon, and low- 
flying bats brushed their hair. Owls hooted, 
hounds barked, and all the unnamed sad night 
noises of the mountain reached their ears. 
Azalea had known such journeys many and 
many a time in the old days when, she had trav- 
eled in the caravan with Sisson’s actors, but to 
4 7 


48 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


Carin and Miss Zillah this plunging ahead up 
a strange road in the pitch blackness was a new 
and not altogether pleasant experience. Mr. 
McEvoy may have guessed at their feelings, for 
he said after a long silence: 

“ Mr. Summers was for you-all stopping 
down at Bee Tree for the night. You could 
V put up at Mis’ Casey’s by turning her step-ma 
out’n her bed. But even then it would have took 
some studying, for the three of you would have 
had to bunk together, and that looked to me 
a leetle like crowding the mourners. So I said 
to Mis’ McEvoy I’d better haul you right up 
home and settle you in our spare room.” 

“ That was very good of you,” said Miss 
Zillah heartily. “ It’s a shame that you had to 
wait so long for the train. I’m afraid Mrs. 
McEvoy will have cooked supper for us hours 
ago, and that she’ll be quite discouraged by this 
time.” 

“ No’m, she won’t,” said McEvoy placidly. 
“ She’s been laying in stores for you-all these 
two or three days past. All I’m to do is to 
whoop when we hit Rattlesnake Turn, and she’ll 
put the kettle to b’iling.” 

“ What,” asked Carin from somewhere down 


SUNSET GAP 49 

in her throat, “ is Rattlesnake Turn, Mr. 
McEvoy, please?” 

“ ’Tain’t nothin’ but a crook in the road, miss. 
A few rattlers has been kilt there on and off, 
and the folks like to keep the name. It makes 
it sound kind of exciting like, and there ain’t 
so many things to cause excitement hereabouts. 
We have to make the most of them we’ve got.” 
He gave a little chuckle, and Carin drew a sigh 
of relief. 

“ I know,” she said under her breath to Miss 
Zillah, “ that I wouldn’t be afraid of lions. At 
least, not terribly afraid. I’d be willing to go 
hunting wild beasts if I had a good rifle, but I 
certainly do hate snakes.” 

“Snakes?” murmured Mr. McEvoy pen- 
sively. “ Snakes don’t like to be rubbed the 
wrong way. Nuther do folks. Take things 
easy, I say — snakes included. Go your way 
and let them go their’n. Of course if they show 
fight, why, scotch ’em. I seem to understand 
snakes.” 

His musical drawling voice died away lan- 
guidly, and no one made any reply. But Azalea, 
who knew the mountain people, smiled a little 
in the darkness, thinking to herself that Mr. 


50 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


McEvoy’s kind treated their neighbors much 
as he did his snakes. 

All things come to an end, and the mountain 
ride was no exception to the rule. Tired, rather 
stiff and very hungry, Miss Zillah and the two 
girls were helped out on a horse block made of 
the huge bole of a chestnut tree, and were 
ushered by “ Mis’ Cassie McEvoy,” into the 
brightness of her mountain cabin. (She was 
given the benefit of her full name by the neigh- 
bors to distinguish her from her sister-in-law 
who lived “ over beyant.”) 

Mrs. McEvoy had the table set, the fire 
blazing on the open hearth, and the kettle simply 
leaping among the coals. 

She was quiet and shy, but she wanted her 
visitors to feel at home and she told them so 
in a voice even softer and slower than her hus- 
band’s. She led them into the second room in 
the cabin — there were only two — and here, 
sure enough, was the “ company room,” with 
its two beds heaped high with feather ticks and 
covered with hand-woven counterpanes. The 
walls were decorated with large framed patent 
medicine advertisements, very strong in color, 
and quite entertaining in subject. One showed 


SUNSET GAP 


51 


St. George slaying the dragon, the legend below 
advertising some oil that was warranted to cure 
man of almost all his pains and aches. Another 
pictured a knight in coat of mail, mounted on 
a charger, rushing at the fell castle of Disease, 
his lance in rest. There were many others, and 
in a moment or two Azalea discovered that 
these went with the rows of bottles — three 
deep — upon the mantel shelf. Tall and dark, 
squat and ruddy, all much labeled and sampled, 
they stood there to bear witness to the chief 
interest of Mis’ Cassie McEvoy’s life. 

“ She didn’t look sickly to me,” said Miss 
Zillah anxiously. “ At least no more so than 
the mountain women usually do.” 

But Mis’ McEvoy did not long leave Miss 
Zillah in ignorance of her complaint. 

“ Anybody’d think,” she said while she 
busied herself setting her supper before them, 
“ that I was trying to p’isen ’em, to look at 
them medicine bottles in thar. I said to Miles 
it was a pity I didn’t have no other place to put 
’em — ” 

“ And I told her,” broke in her husband, “that 
a chimney shelf was whar folks set out the most 
costly stuff they had, and by that I reckoned 


52 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


them medicine bottles was whar they belonged.” 

“ I’ve been ailing,” said Mis’ McEvoy, look- 
ing straight past her husband at Miss Pace, “ for 
nigh on fifteen years. Nobody,” she said 
proudly, “ can make out what it is that does 
ail me. Some says it’s this and some says it’s 
that. Some says take this and some says take 
that.” 

“ And she heeds ’em,” said McEvoy, with a 
sound in his throat between a laugh and a groan. 
“ So if you’ve got anything that’s good for what 
ails her, Miss Pace, ma’am, if you’d be so kind 
as to mention the name of it I would get it the 
next time I’m down to the town.” 

“ Them pictures you see on the wall in the 
company room,” went on Mis’ McEvoy, “ come 
with the medicine.” 

“ They do so,” said her husband, passing the 
chicken to Carin. 

Carin and Azalea were just tired enough to 
feel silly. Each girl knew if she but caught the 
eye of the other, she would be off in a fit of 
laughter, and this was no time for them to dis- 
grace themselves when they had come up as 
bearers of learning and manners, so to speak. 
So they looked anywhere except at each other, 


SUNSET GAP 


S3 


and only Miss Zillah noticed that they were 
choking over their food as they strangled their 
giggles. 

As soon as politeness permitted, they excused 
themselves, and it was a happy moment for 
them when they tumbled onto the high feather 
bed and lay there in delicious drowsiness listen- 
ing to the call of the whippoorwills. They could 
hear Miss Zillah softly moving around, and 
now and then through half-closed lids they saw 
her conscientiously brushing her hair — count- 
ing the strokes as she did so — reading her Bible 
and saying her prayers. But at last preparations 
for the night were finished and all sank to sleep. 

“ Why call this Sunset Gap?” asked Carin 
the next morning. “ Wouldn’t Sunrise Gap do 
as well? ” 

The sun was streaming gorgeously through 
the open casement full upon the bed where the 
girls lay. Azalea sat up with a start, wondering 
for a moment where she was, and how it came 
that Carin’s voice was in her ears. Then she 
saw Miss Zillah’s curls upon the pillow of the 
adjoining bed, recognized the triple row of 
bottles on the mantel shelf, and remembered 
that she was now a responsible person. She 


54 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


was a teacher, a kind of missionary, a some- 
body with a purpose! It was both amusing and 
alarming. 

“ Oh, Carin,” she said with a little nervous 
laugh, “ why ever did we come? Do you sup- 
pose we can do anything worth doing? I’m 
frightened, honestly I am.” 

Carin sat up in bed too, and Azalea watched 
her hair turn into shining gold where the sun 
played upon it. 

“ Honey-bird, what’s the matter with you?” 
Carin demanded. “ I thought people were 
always brave in the morning and downhearted 
at night. You were braver than I was last night 
coming up that dreadful road in the dark, and 
now here you are, getting fussy in broad 
daylight.” 

“ Well,” said Azalea, a little ashamed, “ we’ve 
simply got to make a success, haven’t we? I 
don’t know as I ever before simply had to make 
a success.” 

“Take it easy, the way Mr. McEvoy does 
the snakes,” laughed Carin. “ If you get to 
feeling so dreadfully wise and responsible you 
won’t be able to do a thing.” 

“ That’s right,” said Miss Zillah from her 


SUNSET GAP 


55 


bed. “ I myself have always been too anxious. 
It runs in the Pace blood to be serious and care- 
taking. But now that I’m middle-aged and have 
taken time for thought I see that owls have 
never been as much liked as larks. So you be 
a lark, Azalea. That’s what you naturally are, 
anyway.” 

Azalea gave a little chuckle. She liked Miss 
Zillah’s way of putting things; moreover, these 
particular words stuck in her memory. She 
contrived to “ be a lark ” at breakfast, and she 
insisted on helping Mis’ Cassie McEvoy with 
the dishes and on entering with vivacity into 
the discussion of whether medicine that was 
good for rheumatism would cure heartburn. 
Two bottles of patent medicine which were 
enjoying the most favor just at that time, stood 
on a tiny shelf above the kitchen table. One 
was very fat and contained a dark liquid, and 
this Azalea secretly named “ Bluebeard.” The 
other was slender, tall and filled with a pinkish 
stuff, and this she called “ The Princess 
Madeline.” She told Carin, and they amused 
themselves by watching to see which was most 
in favor. As nearly as they could make out, Mis’ 
Cassie favored Bluebeard of mornings and so 


56 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


probably turned to Princess Madeline along 
toward night. 

Mr. McEvoy had gone down to Bee Tree to 
get the three horses which Mr. Carson was 
having sent up. Mustard and Paprika were 
coming, with a gentle old nag which had been 
one of Miss Zillah’s best friends for many years 
and which bore the name of Minerva. So, the 
house being tidied, the four women folk started 
out — Mis’ Cassie acting as guide — and went 
to look at the schoolhouse and the little cabin 
where Miss Zillah was to set up housekeeping 
with the girls. 

The log schoolhouse, which had been unused 
for four years, lay four-square to the compass, 
facing the purple south. Not that the south had 
any advantage over the other points of the com- 
pass in regard to its color. All the world, 
except, of course, the immediate foreground, 
was purple up at Sunset Gap. The mountains 
threw up peak after peak through the purple 
dimness, and the sky itself lost something of its 
blue brightness because of the purple veils which 
drifted between it and the sweet-smelling earth. 

“ Time was,” explained Mis’ Cassie, “ when 
this here school was kep’ up fine. That was 


SUNSET GAP 


57 


when the Ravenels lived over to the Hall. Mr. 
Theodore Ravenel was pore in his health and 
he come up this-away to git well. He and his 
wife and his children lived to the Hall — ” 

“ What is the Hall? Where is it, please?” 
asked Azalea. 

“ It’s over beyant,” replied Mis’, Cassie, 
waving her hand vaguely toward the slope 
before them. “ But he died, and Mis’ Ravenel 
took the childer’ and left. I reckon she would 
have given something toward keeping up the 
school if she could have spared the money, but 
she had four young ones to rear, and couldn’t 
see her way to it. The school and the teacher’s 
house is just as she left it. My old man’s kept 
an eye on things. He vowed he wouldn’t see 
the place tore to pieces. Thar was plenty here- 
abouts who would ’a’ helped theirselves to the 
furniture and fixings if he’d let ’em, but he said, 
no, anybody who had the gift of peering into 
the future could see that sometime that school 
would be set up here ag’in. And what he said 
has come true.” 

“ Yes, it has, hasn’t it? ” cried Azalea, 
delighted as she always was at any sign of 
friendliness and hopefulness in the world. “ Do 


58 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


hurry, Mrs. McEvoy, please; I’m just wild to 
see how the schoolhouse looks.” 

Mis’ Cassie slipped the huge key in the door 
and the four entered the musty schoolroom. It 
was, as mountain schools go, a well-equipped 
room. There was a fireplace on one side for 
comfort in mildly chill weather, and a large 
sheet iron stove on the other for use on colder 
days. The teacher’s platform was backed by a 
blackboard; there were good desks for both 
pupils and teacher, and comfortable seats with 
backs to them. The room was well lighted, and 
no dirtier than might be expected. It is need- 
less to say, however, that Miss Zillah’s first 
thought was of the cleaning it must undergo. 

“ Where can I find some one to do the cleaning 
for us, Mrs. McEvoy? ” she asked. “ We must 
have everything scrubbed and the walls 
whitewashed.” 

“Well,” said Mis’ Cassie, “ I’d take pride in 
cleaning out, and Miles, he could whitewash.” 

“But are you strong enough?” asked Miss 
Zillah kindly. “ Taking medicine all the time 
as you do, I’m afraid you oughtn’t to do such 
hard work.” 


SUNSET GAP 59 

Mis’ Cassie smiled so that she showed the 
vacant places between her long pointed teeth. 

“ It’s taking all that thar medicine that’s 
pearted me up so I can do it,” she said triumph- 
antly. Miss Zillah said no more in the way of 
warning, but straightway came to terms with 
Mis’ Cassie. Azalea and Carin, looking from 
the windows, did not really think this the best 
site in the world for a schoolhouse. 

“ I don’t know how it will be with the 
pupils,” Azalea said, “ but I’m afraid the 
teachers won’t do a thing but look out of 
the window. Honestly, I’ve never seen such 
views, and you know, Carin, that first and last 
I’ve seen something of the mountains.” 

“ Oh, how I can paint,” Carin sighed happily. 
“ I shall get up early mornings and work before 
school. Oh, Azalea, anyone could learn to 
paint up here — a person couldn’t keep from 
painting.” 

“ I could,” Azalea had to admit. “ You know, 
Carin, if you were a wicked queen and threat- 
ened to cut my head off if I didn’t give you the 
picture of a cow, I’d send for my friends and 
relatives and bid them a tearful good-bye, for 
I’d know my last day had come.” 


60 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ Now we’ll go to the house, my dears,” said 
Miss Zillah. “ If that only proves to be any- 
thing like as comfortable as the schoolhouse, we 
shall be fortunate indeed.” 

They passed through a grove of maples, and 
followed a trail once well worn, that led them 
by way of a little bridge over a cheerfully noisy 
mountain stream to a little headland from which 
the mountain shelved abruptly. Here, among 
towering white pines, and seeming to be almost 
a part of the earth itself, stood a little cabin of 
logs. They were square hewn, but so weathered 
that their color was like that of the tree trunks, 
and the slope of the roof was as graceful as the 
sweeping branches of the great pines. The 
windows were closed with board shutters, and 
the door — well-made and paneled — was 
double-locked. Mis’ Cassie, however, was soon 
able to admit her guests, and they stood for the 
first time within the little room which was to 
live, forever after, in the minds of all of them, 
as a place of peace. 

It was a room of good size, divided after a 
fashion by a huge “ rock ” chimney with a fire- 
place on each side of it — an interesting fact 
which it did not take the delighted girls long 


SUNSET GAP 


61 


to discover. A few simple pieces of furniture 
stood about the room — some easy chairs, a 
settee, a table and a clock. Behind the chimney 
was the bedroom. Here stood two beds, a chest 
of drawers, some straight-backed chairs, and a 
wide bench with pail, pitcher, and washbasin. 
There was nothing more. Nothing more was 
needed. 

“ But the kitchen,” said Miss Zillah, turning 
her gaze reproachfully upon Mis’ Cassie. 

“ Oh, yes,” said Mis’ Cassie, “ sure enough — 
the kitchen.” She led the way through a door 
they had not noticed, and there in a lean-to, with 
a spring bubbling in a “ rock house ” fairly by 
the door, was the little work room, with its small 
cooking stove and its shelves of dishes. 

“Are the dishes horrid?” demanded Carin, 
fearing the worst in the matter of china. 

“ No! ” cried Azalea in the tone of one who 
makes a discovery. “ They’ve pink towers on 
them and pictures of trees. Oh, Carin, see, 
they’re like that plate your mother has! Aren’t 
they the dears? ” 

“ Mis’ Ravenel left them plates and cups,” 
volunteered Mis’ Cassie. “ She said when she 
put ’em on the shelves that she did hope they’d 


62 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


fall into the hands of some one who would set 
store by them. They was what she used and 
she was mighty particular about them, but it 
was such a chore toting things down the moun- 
tains and she’d had such a lot o’ trouble that 
she just left things behind her.” 

“ Well, about all we brought was clothes and 
bedding,” said Miss Zillah. “ Sister Adnah 
wanted me to bring along dishes and pictures 
and curtains and all manner of things, but I 
said 1 No, wait. We won’t be needing pictures 
or curtains, where there’s a picture out of every 
window and no one to be looking in at night, 
and if we’ve no other dishes we can eat out of 
gourds.’ ” 

Miss Zillah gave one of her odd little laughs 
— one of the gypsy laughs in which she 
sometimes indulged. 

“ It’s a fit home for anybody,” she decided. 
“ I can’t hardly wait to get my hands on it and 
clean it up.” 

“ Well, let’s don’t wait,” cried Azalea. “ Mr. 
McEvoy can bring our things right here when 
he comes, can’t he, Mrs. McEvoy. Oh, yes, and 
is there a place for the ponies?” 

“ No,” Mis’ Cassie told them. “ The ponies 


SUNSET GAP 63 

is to be kept at our place. Miles will fetch ’em 
when you want them.” 

Some one is coming,” said Azalea under 
her breath. “ I saw some one walking along 
the road.” 

“ Why, Azalea, anybody would think you 
were Robinson Crusoe. Why should you be so 
surprised to see anybody coming down the 
road? ” asked Carin. 

Azalea did not answer for a moment. She 
moved nearer to the door and looked out; then 
drew back suddenly. 

“ Oh,” she said under her breath, “ it’s that 
boy we saw on the cars — that young man, I 
mean. You know — Keefe O’Connor.” 

“ Oh, is that so?” said Carin in the most 
matter-of-fact way. “ How jolly! Call him in, 
Azalea.” 

But Azalea, the friendly one, Azalea who 
always liked to talk to people, and who, up at 
the McBirney cabin could hardly let anyone 
pass the door without saying “ come in,” held 
back unaccountably. Miss Zillah and Mis’ 
Cassie were still in the kitchen, so they could 
not be appealed to, and finally it was Carin who 
ran out of the door and called. But it really 


64 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


was not necessary to call, for Keefe O’Connor 
had already discovered the little house dropped 
among the pines as naturally as a ground-bird’s 
nest, and he had turned aside to investigate it. 
When he saw the open door and the girls, he 
took off his hat and swung it. 

“ Isn’t this great! ” he cried, not trying to hide 
his delight. “ Do you live here? ” 

“ We’ve been here only half an hour,” said 
Carin. “ But in half an hour more I think we 
may truthfully say that we are living here.” 

Keefe took it for granted that he was expected 
to enter. He looked about the house with 
admiring eyes. 

“ It’s a perfect place,” he said, “ for a painter.” 

“ Oh, Carin’s a painter,” Azalea said quickly. 
How wonderful, she thought, that both Keefe 
and Carin should be artists. It ought to make 
them good friends. 

“And are you an artist too?” asked Keefe, 
turning his dark eyes on Azalea with laughing 
and admiring inquiry. 

“ Mercy, no,” said Azalea. “ I’m nothing — 
just a girl.” 

“ Oh, I see,” he said, smiling radiantly. 

Carin broke in cheerfully with: 



“ I an artist? Mercy, no/’ said Azalea. 

— just a girl.” 


‘ “ I 'm nothing 








SUNSET GAP 


65 


“And are you really staying around here?” 

“Yes” he said; “I’m at the Hall. You 
remember little Miss Rowantree? Her father 
and mother have consented to let me use one of 
their rooms. They have a great many, you 
know.” 

“ Ravenel Hall? ” asked Carin. “ Is that the 
same as Ravenel Hall? We have just been 
hearing something of the Ravenels.” 

“ It’s called Rowantree Hall now,” smiled 
Keefe. “ You see, Rowantree himself lives 
there. He’s lord of the manor.” 

“ Is he so magnificent? ” asked Carin, her 
eyes widening. “ I thought no one lived about 
here except the mountain folk. Mr. Summers 
never told me anything about Mr. Rowantree.” 

“ Then,” said Keefe O’Connor, “ Mr. Sum- 
mers, whoever he may be, couldn’t have known 
very much about the country. To be sure, I 
haven’t been here long myself, but from what 
I’ve seen I should say that Mr. Rowantree was 
a very important character.” 

“ Oh, tell us — ” began Carin. But just then 
Miss Zillah entered. 

“ My dears,” she said, “ Mrs. McEvoy has 
kindly started the fire. Let us wash the dust 


66 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


off the dishes without delay. Mrs. McEvoy 
offers to provide us with vegetables, and our 
supplies will soon be here, so presently we shall 
have dinner.” 

Keefe came forward from the shadow of the 
huge chimney. 

“May I help with the dishes, please?” he 
asked. If he saw in Miss Zillah’s eyes a gleam 
of annoyance that she should have a third person 
foisted upon her care he paid no attention to it. 
She was too hospitable, moreover, to refuse. 

“ Yes,” she said, “ if you do it well. Then, 
having paid for your dinner beforehand, you 
shall eat it with us.” 

Azalea, who was already in the kitchen, heard 
the answer — and dropped the dipper. 


CHAPTER IV 


“ say! teacher! ” 

The schoolhouse was ready. The books and 
tablets, pencils and stereopticon pictures ordered 
by Mr. Carson, all had come. The little house 
of the schoolteachers was ready, too. All that 
was wanting was the pupils. 

But there was little doubt about them — they 
would soon be coming, for posted at corners of 
the main traveled roads, nailed on trees and 
tacked on station and post office walls were 
placards bearing the information that the 
Ravenel School was open and that all who 
wished to study would be welcomed. To make 
plain the nature of the invitation even to those 
who could not read, Carin painted on each 
placard a picture of the schoolhouse, and put 
beyond it a beckoning hand, which, as she 
explained, was her idea of sign writing. 

“ Why, even the groundhogs and chipmunks 
ought to be able to understand that,” said Azalea. 

67 


68 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


Then the services of the carrier of the rural 
mail and of the doctor and the preacher were 
asked. Miles McEvoy made it his business to 
send on the good word by everyone he saw going 
mountainward. The grocer promised to let no 
mountaineer leave his place without telling him 
of the news and asking the person to whom he 
told it, to spread it far and wide. 

So it came to pass that Azalea, sitting on the 
doorstep one morning after her early breakfast, 
saw three heads appearing above the slope. 

“ Carin,” she called. “ They’ve come! ” 

“Who? The gypsies?” 

“ No. The pupils. Oh, where is the key to 
the schoolhouse? Oh, Aunt Zillah, do I look 
in the least like a teacher? Come, Carin, we 
must go meet them.” 

But Carin held back a little because she had 
a curiosity to see how Azalea would meet these 
first seekers after knowledge. They were three 
slender young creatures, two boys and a girl, 
the eldest twelve, the girl not much younger, 
and the second boy a mere wisp of a child who 
looked as if he had been dragged along for 
safe-keeping. 

Azalea had rushed forth from her door 


SAY! TEACHER! 


69 


impetuously, the key to the schoolhouse in her 
hand, but Carin saw her check herself and walk 
toward the children rather slowly. Anyone 
looking at her would have said she was shy. 
But she was not half so shy as the children. 
They had a certain dignity about them, it is true, 
and looked as if they were there to face what- 
ever might come, but they, too, came forward 
slowly, looking from the corners of their eyes, 
and with their heads drooping. When Azalea 
got near them they stopped, and she stopped too. 

“ Howdy,” said Azalea in the mountain 
fashion. 

“ Howdy,” said they. 

A little silence fell. 

“ Have you come up here to get learning? ” 
asked Azalea quaintly. 

“ Yes’m,” said they. The girl added, “ Please 
ma’am.” 

“ It certainly does amaze me,” said Miss 
Zillah under her breath to Carin, “ the good 
manners all the mountain children have. It 
doesn’t matter from what way-back cove they 
come, they seem to understand politeness.” 

“ Isn’t Azalea clever? ” murmured Carin. 
“Now I would probably have frightened them 


70 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


so that they’d have scampered away like 
rabbits.” 

“ The schoolhouse is over yon,” said Azalea. 
The three pupils nodded and when she set out 
they followed. Carin joined them, walking a 
little behind the others. 

“What are your names?” she heard Azalea 
ask quietly — almost lazily. 

“ Coulter,” said the elder boy. “ I’m Bud 
Coulter; my sister, she’s called Mandy Coulter. 
And this here is Babe.” 

Carin ran forward and held out her hand to 
the little one. 

“ Take my hand, Babe,” she said. The child 
drew back for a moment, looking up in Carin’s 
face with something like fear; but when he saw 
those beautiful blue eyes which Azalea loved 
so well, and the shining mass of golden hair, 
his mouth opened slowly like one who sees a 
vision, and when Carin had grasped his thin 
little hand in her own, he walked beside her 
quietly, though his heart beat so that it made 
his homespun blouse rise and fall. 

“ Thar’s a boy living over beyant us that aims 
to come to school if we like it,” Mandy Coulter 
told Azalea. 


SAY! TEACHER! 


71 


“ Hush up,” her brother whispered, poking 
her reprovingly in the ribs. “ Don’t be a 
tell-all.” 

“ Oh, you’ll like it, I reckon,” said Azalea. 
“ Anyway, it’s worth while to learn to read and 
write, isn’t it? People who get on in the world 
all know how to read and write.” 

“ Sam Simms can’t read nor write none,” said 
Bud, “ and he’s got six mules and ten head of 
cattle and his own house and fields.” 

Azalea flushed a little. It came back to her 
memory that it was a part of the delight of 
mountain people to catch each other tripping. 
They liked a tussle of wits ; it was an intellectual 
game with them. 

“ Oh, well,” she said, “ there’s more than one 
way of getting on, of course. But Mr. Simms 
must have been a smart man to get all those 
things without having reading and writing to 
help him. I don’t suppose there’s another man 
in the country who could have done that and 
been so ignorant.” 

“ Ignorant?” retorted Bud Coulter. “ He 
ain’t ignorant. He knows just what to do for 
sick horses and how to gather in swarming bees 
and lots of other things.” 


72 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ How clever of him/’ said Azalea. “ I’d like 
to know him.” 

“ No, you wouldn’t,” declared Bud emphat- 
ically. “ He’s about the meanest man around. 
He can shoot like — ” 

Azalea stopped him on that last word. She 
knew quite certainly what it was going to be. 

“ He wouldn’t want to shoot me, would he? ” 
she asked smilingly. “ I only wanted to meet 
him because he could do so many things, 
although he could not do the best ones — he 
couldn’t read in books what other men thought, 
and he couldn’t write down any of his own 
thoughts. That leaves him in a bad way, doesn’t 
it? Many men not nearly so clever could get 
ahead of him.” Azalea paused a moment. Then 
she cried : “ Why, come in, quick, and I can 

show you how to get ahead of him yourself.” 

Bud’s calm was broken. He looked at Azalea 
for the first time as “ teacher.” 

“ Can you, now?” he asked. 

She threw open the schoolroom door, showed 
the children where to put their hats and ran to 
the blackboard. 

“ You must tell me your real name,” she said. 
“ Surely it isn’t Bud? ” 


SAY! TEACHER! 


73 


“No’m. It’s Laurence Babbitt Coulter.” 

“ Laurence Babbitt Coulter,” she wrote on 
the blackboard in very plain letters. “Can you 
write that, Bud?” 

“ No’m.” 

“ Do you know your letters?” 

“ When I don’t forget.” 

“ By the end of the week,” said Azalea with 
decision, “ you will know your letters and you 
will be able to write your own name. Then you 
can do something that Mr. Simms can’t do.” 

The boy grinned. 

“ I can come it over him,” he said. He was 
again enjoying the encounter of wits. This 
made Azalea say hastily: 

“ But of course, since he’s so much older than 
you, Bud, you mustn’t let him know that you can 
come it over him.” 

“ Sure, I must,” cried the boy. “ He’s been 
mean to my pa. He’s the meanest man in these 
parts, and he’s got a son — at least it ain’t really 
his son — it’s his brother’s son — who’s so 
meachin’ that he don’t even know enough to be 
mean, and if that white-livered boob tries to 
come up here to this here school — ” 


74 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ Why, we’ll teach him how to write his name, 
too,” said Azalea valorously. 

“ I won’t stay in no school that Skully Simms 
comes to,” declared Bud. 

Azalea threw a glance at Carin, who was sit- 
ting in one of the school seats beside Babe, and 
whose face had turned rather white. Carin had 
been prepared for gratitude from the pupils; it 
had never occurred to her that they would come 
to school in a warring attitude. Moreover, for 
the first time she realized what a young girl 
Azalea still was. As her Zalie stood there on the 
platform, her hair rumpled by the wind, her face 
flushed with perplexity, her frock coming just 
below her shoe tops, she looked very tender and 
youthful indeed. But she had what Sam 
Disbrow would have called “ the fighting stuff ” 
in her. 

“ This school is for learning,” she said, “ and 
learning has nothing to do with friend or foe. 
It is for all alike. Chinamen with cues down 
their backs, Arabs riding on camels over the 
desert, East Indians, all dressed in white with 
turbans on their heads, may be learned. They 
live on the other side of the world — quite on 
the other side of this great ball we call the earth 


“ SAY! TEACHER! ” 75 

— but they have just as much right to get 
learning as we have.” 

Carin had an idea. She jumped from her 
seat and ran to the blackboard. 

“ Did you ever see a picture of a camel? ” she 
asked. 

Before the children could answer she had 
begun sketching one. She had colored chalks, 
and in a moment or two her brown camel was 
surrounded by a stretch of desert sand. Far 
off, a fronded palm indicated an oasis. Then 
she began telling them what the picture meant; 
she told them of the desert and the life on it, 
and of the old, old learning of the Arabs. The 
children sat spellbound. 

When she had finished, Azalea took up a 
piece of chalk. 

“Now,” she said quietly but in a tone from 
which there was no demurring, “ we will learn 
our letters.” 

Bud gave her one last defiant glance; then his 
eyes fell. 

“ Yes’m,” he said. 

Half an hour later two more pupils came, one 
a red-headed boy named Dibblee Sikes, the 
other a girl called Paralee Panther, with aston- 


76 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


ishingly heavy eyebrows, a sullen look and only 
one arm. She was the only one of the pupils 
who really knew how to read. Moreover, she 
was, under all her sullenness, wild to learn more. 
With her heavy eyes she watched every move 
that Carin or Azalea made; she listened eagerly 
and yet as if only half understanding, to all they 
said. 

After school was over, Azalea, more tired 
mentally than she ever remembered to have been 
in her life, walked beside this girl for a way. 

“ How is it that you have been taught? ” asked 
Azalea. 

The girl did not seem to understand. At 
least, she failed to reply. 

“Who taught you your letters?” Azalea 
asked again. 

“ A woman. She’s dead.” 

“ Did she live around here? Was it Mrs. 
Ravenel’s teacher?” 

“ No. We don’t belong hereabouts. We’ve 
just come.” 

“Oh, is that so?” said Azalea with interest. 
“ And do you live near? ” 

“ Six miles from here.” 

“ No — not really! Oh, that’s too far for you 


SAY! TEACHER! 


77 


to walk every day. Can’t you live somewhere 
nearer while school lasts?” 

“ I’m content where I be.” 

“ But the walk — ” 

“ I can walk it,” said the girl. Compared 
with her heavy sulkiness, Bud Coulter’s habit 
of arguing was blitheness itself. However, as 
Azalea turned at the house door to look after 
her strange group of pupils, Dibblee, the red- 
headed boy, waved his hand, and little Babe 
Coulter called: “Say, teacher, I’m coming 
nex’-day.” 

She slipped in the house with Carin beside 
her, to find Miss Zillah and Mrs. McEvoy 
waiting anxiously to get a report of the first 
day’s work. 

“ Them Coulters,” said Mrs. McEvoy when 
she heard the name of the first pupils mentioned, 
“ are the ones that have a war with the Simmses. 
They’ve kept it up for twenty years and more. 
Seems like they’re set on seeing which can kill 
the others off.” 

“ Oh,” cried Azalea, “ is it really one of those 
dreadful mountain quarrels? Mrs. McEvoy, do 
you suppose we could do anything to break 
it up?” 


78 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


Mis’ Cassie threw an amused and commis- 
erating look at Azalea, who was looking, 
for her, white-faced and nervous — not that 
Azalea’s cheeks could really fade out com- 
pletely. 

“ I don’t think I’d aim to do that,” she said 
dryly. “ You ’tend to your teaching, Miss 
Azalea, and perhaps the light of learning may 
show them the folly of walking in dark ways.” 

Carin was telling about Paralee Panther. 

“ Oh, one of them Panthers,” said Mrs. 
McEvoy. “ They’re strangers. Nobody takes 
to them much — can’t get it out of them where 
they come from nor what they aim to do. 
They’ve all got heavy looks, but that girl’s the 
worst of the lot.” 

“ She’s quite a contrast to Dibblee Sikes,” 
mused Carin. 

“ Now, there’s a right peart boy! ” exclaimed 
Mrs. McEvoy with unusual enthusiasm. “ He’s 
a blessing to his mother, and a fine friendly lad 
altogether.” 

It was time to get supper and Carin and 
Azalea insisted on helping Miss Zillah, though 
they would have been particularly glad to have 


SAY! TEACHER! 


79 


snuggled down on the settee and forgotten the 
world. They had promised Annie Laurie that 
Aunt Zillah should not be allowed to get weary 
and they were determined to keep their word. 
But after supper Miss Zillah insisted on stack- 
ing the dishes away until morning. She said 
she wanted to sew and talk, and that doing the 
dishes the next day would help her to pass the 
time. So while she put some tiny tucks in a 
summer frock for Annie Laurie, the girls told 
her of everything that had happened during the 
day. Miss Zillah was rather dismayed. 

“ I don’t understand about those children,” 
she said. “ Their spirits don’t seem to be right.” 

However, by the end of the week, there was 
much more encouraging news to give her. The 
children who joined the school along toward 
the last of the week were milder and better 
mannered than those who had come at first. It 
seemed as if the more obstinate and ill-tempered 
had come first to tfy out the young teachers. 
Poor Skully Simms, the nephew of the man who 
had a “ war ” with the Coulters, dared not show 
his face. Mrs. McEvoy heard that he was 
“ wishful ” to come, but was afraid of Bud 


80 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


Coulter. One day Azalea caught a glimpse of 
a face at the window, and after school Dibblee 
Sikes told her that it was Skully Simms. 

“ He’s jest pestered to know what we-all are 
doing,” he said. “ But he’s skeered of Bud.” 

“ I might ride down and see him,” said 
Azalea. “ Perhaps I could coax him to come.” 

“ Then if he got in bad with Bud and there 
was blood-shedding,” said Dibblee wisely, 
“ you’d be taking blame to yourself. It might 
break up the school, ma’am. That would do 
harm to the whole lot of us. Folks around here 
don’t believe in stirring up the Coulters and 
Simms.” 

“ ‘ Let sleeping dogs lie,’ ” quoted Azalea. 
“ Perhaps you’re right. You know the neigh- 
bors and I don’t.” 

She was glad when Keefe O’Connor volun- 
teered to come in every afternoon and teach the 
upper class boys geography and what he called 
“ current history.” He had a notion that what 
they needed more than anything else was to 
have some notion of what was going on in the 
outside world. He said he always managed to 
be followed by a New York newspaper no mat- 
ter how far in the backwoods he went. He had 


SAY! TEACHER! 


81 


left Rowantree Hall, partly because he had no 
wish to put the family to further trouble, but 
chiefly because he wanted to be nearer the school, 
where he meant to lend a hand now and then. A 
tent appeared miraculously on the mountainside, 
to which Keefe proudly gave the name of 
“ home.” He arose early and painted during 
the morning hours ; then, after his dinner, cooked 
in the open, he helped at school. After that, as 
the shadows deepened and lay across the slopes, 
he went back to his canvas and brushes. Carin 
was wild to join him, but the truth was that 
those first few days of teaching drained every 
drop of strength in her, and Azalea and Aunt 
Zillah hurried her into her bed immediately 
after supper. 

“ It wouldn’t be so bad,” she complained to 
Aunt Zillah, half laughing and half in earnest, 
“ if it wasn’t for that dreadful Paralee Panther. 
She seems like a bad dream; the only trouble 
is I can’t wake up. I’d like to think I had 
imagined her. But she is real and needs us 
more, I suspect, than anybody else in the school.” 

“ She’s always frowning and watching,” 
Azalea added. “ It makes me want to scream. 
Carin, did you ever see anybody with such heavy 


82 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


eyelids? And Aunt Zillah, she watches at us 
from the corners of her eyes. Don’t you just 
hate a trick like that? ” 

“How ever could she have lost her arm?” 
wondered Carin. “ A boy might have shot his 
off, but it’s strange for a girl to have lost an 
arm.” 

“ Oh, well,” said Aunt Zillah philosophically, 
“ we came up here to find some queer people, 
and we’re not disappointed. Queerness often 
means unhappiness, that’s what I’ve discovered. 
If you girls succeed in doing what you came up 
to do and help these poor people out of some 
of their troubles and drawbacks, perhaps they 
won’t be so queer.” 

The evenings at home — they called the cot- 
tage “ home ” now and had named it the 
“Oriole’s Nest” — were very restful and 
delightful. If Carin went to bed, she did so 
on the couch in the sitting room, so that she 
might be with the others. Sometimes Aunt 
Zillah sewed — always for Annie Laurie — and 
sometimes she read aloud. Azalea had some 
crocheting with which she busied herself. Mrs. 
Carson had taught her to make some beautiful 
things, and Azalea had developed a sort of pas- 


SAY! TEACHER! 


83 


sion for them. She wanted to make something 
lovely for everyone she loved ; and Mrs. Carson’s 
last gift to her had been a great quantity of 
beautiful wools of many delicate shades. 

Keefe O’Connor dropped in the little house 
evenings, too, and added to the gayety by “ pick- 
ing ” on the guitar which he had borrowed from 
the McEvoys. Sitting on the doorstep, his hand- 
some head thrown back against the casing, his 
dark eyes fixed with something like yearning 
affection on the group in the room, he crept, 
brotherly fashion, into the heart of each of them. 
He did not explain himself — said nothing of 
his parents, of his past, of his means of living — 
yet he seemed to have for his own Bohemian 
purposes, all that he needed, and to be happy 
in spite of that curious wistfulness which every- 
one felt who came near him. 

“ It does seem as if he was honing for some- 
thing,” Mrs. McEvoy said one day when he was 
under discussion. “ It may only be liver trouble, 
of course. If so, I could help him out there. I’ve 
got three bottles of liver special that I ain’t never 
took. Or if it’s indigestion or rheumatism, there 
again I could be of aid to him. I was saying 
to Miles the other night, seems as if, since you 


84 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


folks came, I didn’t pay half the attention to my 
medicine that I used to. Aside from them two 
bottles in the kitchen, I don’t call on none of 
them.” 

“ And if those two bottles weren’t sitting 
where you could see them,” said Miss Zillah 
with unusual boldness, “ probably you wouldn’t 
be taking the medicine from them. I do say, 
Mrs. McEvoy, and I’ll abide by it, that health 
is nine-tenths a matter of good food, good air 
and a happy heart.” 

“ Oh, la,” said Mrs. McEvoy with more tem- 
per than any of them had yet seen in her, “ it’s 
easy for you to say that, Miss Pace, when you’ve 
got your health. But if you’d been through what 
I have — ” 

She could not bring herself to finish, but sud- 
denly remembering that she had some baking to 
do, left hastily and walked with unusual swing- 
ings of her body down the path that led to her 
home. 

The path was getting pretty well worn now, 
and the dwellers in the Oriole’s Nest were well 
pleased that it was so. They were attached to 
Mis’ Cassie McEvoy, and were a good deal 
worried that she seemed displeased with them. 


SAY! TEACHER! 


85 


“ I’d like to knock Bluebeard and the Prin- 
cess Madeline off the shelf and break them to 
flinders,” said Carin. They all called Mrs. 
McEvoy’s favorite bottles by the names Azalea 
had given them. “ It could be done so acci- 
dentally that she’d think it was the cat.” 

“ No, she wouldn’t,” said Miss Zillah firmly. 
“ Don’t you try anything like that, Carin. 
Folks have to work out their own liberty. It 
can’t be done for them by anybody else, though 
a little help may be given now and then. I 
think I’ll bake some of those cookies that Mis’ 
Cassie likes, and I can send some over to her 
when Mr. McEvoy comes with the milk. I 
wouldn’t have her offended with me for 
anything.” 

Miss Zillah always contrived to be busy, it 
seemed, and she could keep those around her 
busy, too. She was quite determined that there 
should be nothing slipshod about the Oriole’s 
Nest, and had laid out a fine set of rules for 
work which had to be followed. Even Keefe — 
who had soon fallen into the way of having his 
dinner with them — had his duties. At night, 
when Miss Zillah supervised the last offices of 
the day, it was he who brought in the pails of 


86 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


fresh water from the spring, and who filled the 
wood box. When he had said good night 
— lingering a little — Miss Zillah locked the 
doors and drew the curtains. Then she waited 
till the girls were snug in bed, and kissing them 
with gentle seriousness, turned out the light. 

It made it a touch less lonely for them all to 
hear Keefe whistling on his way to his tent- 
home. He had made it quite “ shipshape ” and 
he took a genuine pride in it. But he did not 
sleep in it; instead, he slung his hammock from 
the trees and rested there in moonshine or star- 
light. Even a light rain could not drive him 
in. Then, in the morning early, having cooked 
his breakfast, he was off with his painter’s kit. 
But his duties seemed always to take him past 
the door of the Oriole’s Nest, and as he passed 
he called out mockingly: 

“ Say, teacher.” 

It won him a blithe signal from some one — 
possibly from all three of the cottage dwellers. 


CHAPTER V 

ROWANTREE HALL 

The third Sunday of their sojourn on the 
mountain, they accepted an invitation to Rowan- 
tree Hall. Keefe O’Connor had been the mes- 
senger, bringing the invitation by word of 
mouth, and though Miss Zillah was not quite 
sure about the propriety of accepting, the girls 
overbore all objections. So it was agreed that 
Keefe was to be their guide there and back — to 
which end he borrowed one of Miles McEvoy’s 
horses — and they set forth in the middle of a 
shimmering July forenoon. Keefe and Miss 
Zillah rode ahead; Azalea and Carin followed 
on their ponies, each of the feminine members of 
the party carrying in a neat saddlebag a clean 
summer frock to be donned upon arriving. 

They followed the main traveled road but a 
short way, turning off presently on what looked 
like an old wood road. It was almost overgrown 
with huckleberries and little pines, and the far- 
ther they went, the prettier and wilder it grew. 

87 


88 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


At length they entered a magnificent piece of 
woodland where the chestnut and the maple, the 
tulip and the gum, the chestnut oak and the red 
oak and many other beautiful trees grew 
together. Then behold, in the midst of this they 
came upon a gateway made of great logs, with 
an iron lantern hanging from each end of the 
crosspiece, and above it in rustic letters the 
words “ Rowantree Hall.” 

“ I feel,” said Carin, “ as if I might come upon 
the Sleeping Princess at any moment.” 

“ And I feel,” Azalea answered, “ as if we 
might all be turned into sleeping princesses. 
Oh, Keefe, are you sure this is not an enchanted 
wood? ” 

Keefe looked back over his shoulder gayly. 

“ I’m not at all sure,” he said. “ If you know 
of any way of keeping off enchantments — ” 

“ I don’t want to keep them off,” Carin called. 
“ Oh, how wonderful it all is! Aunt Zillah, we 
are going to have an adventure.” 

“ No doubt,” said Aunt Zillah, quite as light- 
hearted and care-free as any of the young people. 
“ It is impossible to avoid adventures. Life 
itself is an adventure.” 

They had to ride a mile after they entered 


ROWANTREE HALL 


89 


the gate before they came to the house, and the 
only indications that they were near the habita- 
tion of man were the paths which ran here and 
there among laurel or rhododendron, and the 
rustic seats which were placed at intervals along 
the way. But at last the house arose before them. 
It had started out to be what Mr. Carson would 
have called a Southern mansion. The double 
gallery should have been supported by fluted 
pillars, but instead of these classic shafts, the 
boles of eight great chestnut trees served 
the purpose. The house had never been prop- 
erly painted, only “ primed ” with ochre which 
had faded until it was almost the color of the 
ground around it, but over this had grown a 
multitude of vines. English ivy, Virginia 
creeper, trumpet flower, honeysuckle, purple 
and white clematis, the Dorothy Perkins rose 
and the matrimony vine climbed, ramped, and 
enwrapped according to their dispositions, till 
the ragged looking house was as gay as a castle 
with banners. 

On the lower gallery, in white linen, very 
stately and hospitable in appearance, sat Rowan- 
tree himself. 

“ What a pleasure to have guests,” he said 


90 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


with an English accent, coming forward to assist 
Miss Zillah from her horse. “ We have been 
looking forward to this honor with the greatest 
appreciation.” 

Miss Zillah could be stately herself when 
occasion demanded, and she was quite as polite 
as Mr. Rowantree when she thanked him. If 
Mr. Rowantree could have had his way, he 
would have beaten his hands together and sum- 
moned his slaves to lead the horses to the stables. 
But the truth — the bare and undecorated truth 
— was that there were neither slaves nor stables, 
the first never having come into Mr. Rowan- 
tree’s life, and the second having been burned 
to the ground a few years back. But the horses, 
which Mr. Rowantree and Keefe cared for, were 
no doubt much happier let loose in a field near 
at hand. The ponies in particular were enthusi- 
astic, and their cheerful neighings could be 
heard at intervals the rest of the day. 

Aunt Zillah, followed by her two girls, 
entered what the Rowantrees were pleased to 
call their “ drawing-room.” It was large enough 
to deserve the name, no question about that. And 
the outlook from its great windows was so beau- 
tiful — the house being on a rise and overlooking 


ROWANTREE HALL 


91 


the forest about it and glimpsing the mountains 
beyond — that curtains would have been a mere 
drawback. Nor could any wall covering have 
been softer in color than the gray building paper 
which had been tacked on the joists of the house, 
since the builders never had got as far as lath 
and plaster. There was no chimney shelf, but 
there was a large fireplace, heaped for the occa- 
sion with oleander leaves. A few pieces of fine 
mahogany furniture were surrounded by the 
rudest mountain chairs, and the wall decorations 
consisted of a beautiful clock which kept the 
time of sunrise and moonrise as well as the hours 
of the day; in addition there were two fine, 
mellow portraits in oil, a fowling piece, two 
broken tennis rackets and some mountain baskets. 

Miss Zillah was too delicate-minded to take 
stock of anybody’s possessions, but the eager 
girls, set on their own sort of an adventure, 
noticed these odds and ends with one sweep of 
their eyes. Then, the next moment, the mistress 
of the house entered, and all was forgotten in 
looking at her. 

She was taller than Barbara Summers, whom 
they both used as a standard for sweet women, 
but still she was small. Her face was unmis- 


92 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


takably Irish; her eyes gray-misted blue, her 
hair as black as Keefe O’Connor’s. Her mouth 
was sad and glad at once, and there was a strange, 
appealing look in her face as of wanting some- 
thing. She seemed homesick for something — 
perhaps for something she never had had. The 
girls felt that if she had a happy time she 
wouldn’t, in the midst of it, be able to forget 
sorrow; and that if she were very sorrowful, 
she would still manage to hold on to joy. Carin 
said afterward that her face made her think of 
Ellen Terry’s. Azalea had not, of course, seen 
this great actress, but she, too, thought some- 
how of acting. As soon as Mrs. Rowantree 
began to talk, Azalea felt as if she were in a 
story book or on the stage. Like Rowantree 
himself, his wife was dressed in white, but it 
was, as Azalea could not help noticing, a very 
old frock with various rents in it, just as Mr. 
Rowantree’s linen was frayed and ragged. But 
these things seemed, somehow, to make the 
“adventure” all the more interesting. Mrs. 
Rowantree had quick, gay motions, and she 
walked down the length of the long curious 
room as if she were tripping on her toes. 

“ Miss Pace, it’s a great pleasure to be meet- 


ROWANTREE HALL 


93 


in g you,” she said, not waiting for an introduc- 
tion, but grasping Miss Zillah’s hand. To Carin 
and Azalea she said: “ Young faces are flowers 
at the feast!” Her way was so quaintly 
old-fashioned, so charming, so dramatic, that 
Azalea again thought of play-acting; yet Mrs. 
Rowantree was nothing, it seemed, if not sin- 
cere. So perhaps it was best, Azalea decided, to 
think of this as the most charming “ really truly ” 
thing that had come her way. 

Miss Zillah made it known that they were 
not content to remain in their riding clothes, 
and Mrs. Rowantree offered their apologies to 
her husband with pretty ceremony. 

“ The ladies wish to be excused, my dear,” 
she said. “ They have to make themselves more 
acceptable to the gentlemen.” She contrived 
to include Keefe in the little bow she swept 
them. So the four ladies were off up a stairway 
designed for a magnificent hand rail, but having 
nothing better in the way of a balustrade than a 
stout rope strung through posts. 

Upstairs the appearance of things was 
even more bare and unsettled than below. The 
room to which they were taken was that occu- 
pied, apparently, by Mr. and Mrs. Rowantree, 


94 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


and here was almost nothing in the way of fur- 
niture beyond the beds and a most elaborate 
dressing case belonging to Rowantree himself, 
spread out on a table before a triplicate mirror. 
Opposite it stood another table above which 
hung a very small mirror, where, it was evident 
by the meager little feminine articles, Mary 
Cecily Rowantree made her toilet. The cellu- 
loid brushes were in great contrast to the gold- 
stoppered, tortoise shell contrivances in Mr. 
Rowantree’s case. 

While the white frocks were being put on, 
Mrs. Rowantree lent a hand with deftness and 
gayety. She delighted in Carin’s golden hair 
and in Aunt Zillah’s beautiful silver curls. She 
said Azalea was like a rose, and that Constance 
had done nothing but talk of her since the day 
on the train. 

“ The children/’ said Mrs. Rowantree, “ are 
in the nursery waiting impatiently to see you.” 
It appeared that every bare room in the great 
unfinished house had its name. 

When they all rustled down in their white 
gowns, Mr. Rowantree greeted them magnifi- 
cently at the foot of the stairs. 

“ Have the children brought, my dear,” he 


ROWANTREE HALL 95 

said to his wife. “ They naturally are eager to 
be released.” 

From his tone one would have expected the 
children to enter accompanied by at least a 
governess and a nurse, but it was the little proud 
mother herself who brought in Gerald — “my 
eldest son, Miss Pace,” — and Moira and 
Michael — “ my darling twins, young ladies,” 
— and led by the hand that wise young person, 
Constance, who flew like a bird to Azalea’s 
arms. 

“ She’s like myself,” said Mrs. Rowantree, 
“ fierce in her affections.” 

Azalea laughed. “ Oh, so am I,” she said. 
“ Mr. McBirney, my adopted father, always 
tells me that. He wants me to be calm, but I 
can’t stay calm.” 

Mary Cecily Rowantree gave a rippling 
laugh. 

“ Why be calm,” she asked, “ when you can 
be having a fine excitement about something or 
other? ” 

“ It’s the Irish blood in her,” explained Mr. 
Rowantree benevolently, “ that makes my wife 
like that. I am not so easily amused myself. A 
quiet life, that’s what suits me best. I ask noth- 


96 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


in g better than to sit on my gallery and look at 
my peaceful trees. My dear, dinner will be 
served ere long, I take it? ” Again it seemed 
as if there must be a cook and cook’s assistants, 
scullions and servitors not far off. But again it 
was little Mrs. Rowantree who dashed to fill 
orders. Miss Zillah was persuaded to join Mr. 
Rowantree on the gallery, but Carin and Azalea 
insisted on going into the kitchen to help, for 
by this time they were quite aware of the condi- 
tion of things. It was quite evident that Mr. 
Rowantree had an imagination, and not only saw 
some things which did not exist, but contrived 
not to see the unpleasant ones that did. 

However, as the four handsome children per- 
sisted in tagging their mother into the kitchen, 
Mrs. Rowantree said to Carin: 

“ If you’re really wanting to help — and I 
can see your heart’s in it — would you mind 
telling a story to the young ones off somewhere? 
They’re always under my feet, and while good- 
ness knows I love to have them hanging about 
me, they are a hindrance to the getting of the 
dinner.” 

“ Story? ” cried Carin. “ I know twenty. 


ROWANTREE HALL 


97 


Come, children! ” And she vanished, followed 
not only by the four young Rowantrees, but by 
Keefe O’Connor as well. 

So it was Azalea who had the next hour with 
the hostess. 

“ I thought we’d eat on the gallery,” said Mrs. 
Rowantree. “ It gives us a fine outlook over 
the estate.” 

There was no table on the gallery, but boards 
laid on sawhorses served every purpose, and the 
linen which Mrs. Rowantree gave Azalea to 
spread over this rude table was of the finest, most 
beautiful damask. The dishes, on the other 
hand, were of the commonest and had evidently 
been purchased at Bee Tree or some similar 
mart. But as for the food, Mrs. Rowantree 
knew how to manage that. She evidently made 
a fine art of seasoning, and while, as she said, 
they “ had not the advantage of markets ” at 
Rowantree Hall, they contrived, apparently, to 
get plenty to eat. 

It was quite a formal moment when Rowan- 
tree himself waved them all to their seats. He 
placed Miss Zillah’s chair for her magnificently, 
while Keefe placed Mrs. Rowantree’s. Miss 


98 


AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


Zillah was made to feel the distinction conferred 
upon her by being placed at the right hand of 
her host, who proceeded to carve his barnyard 
fowl with as many gestures as a trencher man 
of the middle ages might have used in carving 
the wild boar. 

The Rowantree children apparently forgot 
nothing in the way of manners — at least so far 
as outward appearances went. It is true that 
Carin received a bad kick in the shins which 
was not intended for her; and that Azalea had 
to hold Moira’s hand to keep her from pinching 
her twin, but nothing could be sweeter than the 
way they thanked their father when he served 
them with food, or the smiling manner in which 
they answered questions. 

While they sat there, it began to rain softly, 
gray, bead-like drops falling from the gallery’s 
edge to the ground, and hanging a soft shining 
curtain between them and the outer world. 
Azalea never forgot the beauty of it all. There 
was no wind, and they were quite as comfortable 
behind their silver curtain as they would have 
been in the house — more so, indeed, for the day 
had been a hot one. Delicious odors came up 
from the ground; the birds gave forth contented, 


ROWANTREE HALL 99 

throaty sounds, and all the regal midsummer 
mountain world seemed well content. 

They were very happy together, with a free- 
dom from care that does not often come in this 
rather grim world. Only in the eyes of Mary 
Cecily Rowantree there remained that strange 
look of longing, of forever searching for some- 
thing which she could not find. Keefe O’Con- 
nor caught it, and sympathized. Azalea saw 
it, and because she too had a hurt — as orphans 
must needs have — she too understood. Those 
who have a sorrow belong to a great brother- 
hood and know each other by secret signs. 

But it was a happy dinner for all of that. 
Between courses Rowantree himself offered to 
sing them an old ballad, and in a rich bass voice 
which set the echoes of the wood at work, he 
thundered the lines of “ The Maid of Bohea.” 
There was great applause, and he sang again. 
It was to his singing of “ Bold Robin Hood,” 
that Azalea and his wife brought in the custard 
pie and the homemade cheese, and to the sad 
strains of “ A Sailor There Was ” that they 
finally cleared the table. After dinner every- 
one turned in to help, save the master of the 
house, who still felt the need of quiet and of 


100 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


looking down what he called “ the approach,” 
by which he meant the winding road that led 
from the house to the gate. 

If Mr. Rowantree could sing old English 
ballads, Mrs. Rowantree could sing, most 
bewitchingly, old Irish lyrics. Carin and 
Azalea could sing, too, though not like their 
friend Annie Laurie. Keefe had plenty of good 
will even if he had not much of a voice, and 
Miss Zillah had a sweet little silver thread of 
song which she was not ashamed to display. So 
among them they had a musical afternoon, 
accompanied by one and another on the old 
square piano with its rattling keys. The gentle 
shower that had fallen during dinner had passed 
as quietly as it came, and the sun shone softly 
through the wet shining leaves of the trees into 
the room. 

However, it was just before going home that 
Azalea had her real “ adventure.” Mrs. Rowan- 
tree had drawn her arm through her own, and 
the two of them had strolled together down 
one of the laurel-edged paths of the place. 

“ Keefe O’Connor has been telling me your 
story,” Mary Cecily said gently, “ and I want 


ROWANTREE HALL 101 

to say that it’s myself who knows how to sym- 
pathize with you.” 

“ Oh,” Azalea replied with a sharp little catch 
of the breath, “ I didn’t know anyone had told 
Keefe about me.” 

“ Never fear but the story will follow you,” 
returned Mrs. Rowantree with an accent of wis- 
dom. “ Stories good and bad have a way of 
following one. But this I will say, Miss Azalea: 
I honor you for what you’ve done and the way 
you’ve clung to those who took you in when you 
were homeless. It’s very like my own story — 
very like, indeed.” 

“ Is it?” asked Azalea, forgetting herself at 
once and warming to her companion. “ Have 
you been alone in the world, Mrs. Rowantree? ” 

“ Alone in a way you never were, Miss Azalea, 
for I lost through my own heedlessness the one 
living creature that should have been my care, 
and the knowledge of it is always eating at my 
heart in spite of my good husband and my 
blessed babes.” 

“ Oh, Mrs. Rowantree,” cried the girl, dis- 
tressed, “ aren’t you blaming yourself for some- 
thing that wasn’t really your fault? ” 


102 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


Mary Cecily turned her misty eyes toward 
Azalea, tragedy brooding in them. 

“ If you wish to hear my story,” she said, “ sit 
here and I will tell it to you. My good husband 
doesn’t like me to talk of it, but my sorrow gets 
pent in me and tears me, which is what he doesn’t 
understand. I’ll be better for telling you the 
strange tale.” 

There was a rude bench beneath a fine sour- 
wood tree, and Azalea, sitting Turk-wise at one 
end so that she might face her companion, pre- 
pared to give her attention to the “ strange tale ” 
— and she thrilled as she did so, for she loved 
strange tales with a great love. 


CHAPTER VI 

LITTLE BROTHER 

“ My father,” said Mrs. Rowantree with her 
delicate Irish accent, “was a gentleman — a 
scholar and a gentleman.” She paused a 
moment in that little dramatic way of hers and 
then went on. “ But my mother was a cottager’s 
daughter, very sweet and lovely to see, but lack- 
ing the fine ways of himself. He gave up his 
friends for her sake, and they left the village 
where they were known and went to live in 
Dublin where my father made a living by writ- 
ing for the newspapers and reviews. I was born 
the second year of their marriage, and seven 
years later my little brother David came into 
the world.” She paused again, but this time 
because there was a tightening in her throat 
which would not let her go on. 

“ David,” she said, “ was the finest baby I 
ever laid my eyes on, and I’ve had some fine ones 
of my own. He was a treasure from the first, 
103 


104 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


but the older he grew the nicer he became, till, 
when he was three years of age, he was the pride 
of the neighborhood. People stopped my 
mother on the street for the privilege of looking 
at him. He had laughing black eyes and curly 
black hair, and the oddest little turns to his baby 
talk that ever were heard. Oh, we were so 
happy with him — so wrapped up in him. 
Indeed, you’d have looked well through Dublin 
before finding a home equal to our own for 
contentment. My father was getting some little 
fame for his writing, and my mother no longer 
had to slave for us the way she did at first. 

“ Then, just as we were at our happiest, 
father came home with a chill. I well remem- 
ber it. We were watching for him at the win- 
dow, David and mother and I, and we had a 
meat pie because of his liking for it, and we had 
taught David to say 1 Four and Twenty Black- 
birds.’ Oh, we were counting on such a happy 
evening! But when dad came in, he did not 
speak to us for the anguish that was on him, and 
mother got him in his bed, and he never got out 
of it again.” 

“ Oh, me! ” said Azalea softly. 

A little silence fell in which Mary Cecily 


LITTLE BROTHER 105 

Rowantree locked and unlocked her thin, nerv- 
ous fingers in a way of her own. 

“ And after he was gone,” she resumed, “ we 
had nothing. Never had he earned enough for 
my mother to put by any savings. So we took 
to selling off what was in the house, and she to 
doing sewing and embroidering, but in a little 
while she saw it was no use — there’d be nothing 
for us but starvation unless some great piece of 
fortune befell us. My mother was a devout 
woman and she prayed morning and night and 
often through the day for help for her children, 
and her prayers, she thought, were answered 
when word came from my father’s brother who 
was in America, that if she’d bring the children 
to him, he’d care for them with his own, and 
she could be about some kind of work. In 
America, he said, there were chances. He sent 
us money for the journey, but not very much — 
all he could afford, of course. So mother, who 
was not afraid to do anything for her children’s 
sake, took passage with other poor people in 
the steerage of a great ship sailing from 
Queenstown.” 

“ Poor little dear,” said Azalea. 

“ Poor little dear!” echoed Mary Cecily. 


106 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ There were swarms of us on that boat. We 
were all huddled and mixed; a torment to each 
other, with the number of us. And the sea was 
very rough. Day after day it stormed, and my 
little mother, worn with work and worry, was ill 
unto death. Others were ill, but not so cold, so 
weak, so weary as she. But few could give her 
attention. They said : 1 She’ll be well in a 

while.’ But she woke me one night and told 
me she would never be well ; that she could feel 
her heart giving way. She gave me the address 
of my uncle, and told me not to lose it whatever 
I did, and she had me pin the money that was 
left, on my little shirt and told me God would 
raise up friends for me, who would give me 
directions to my uncle’s door, and that once there 
I was safe. I listened till she had finished and 
then I ran for help. At first the ship’s doctor 
did not want to come out of his warm berth, but 
I got on my knees to him and he came. He 
thought ’twas only a case of seasickness, and 
maybe he was right. But my little lion-hearted 
one died that night. So David and I were alone 
in the world.” 

The memory of the old anguish was upon her, 
and she stared before her at the great trees of 


LITTLE BROTHER 


107 


her “ estate,” all of her life dropping back to 
that bleak hour when she was left an orphan 
among those many poor in the great ship’s heart. 

“ Oh,” cried Azalea, “ I hope you won’t think 
about it, Mrs. Rowantree. That’s how I man- 
age to get along. I say to myself : ‘ My sorrow 
is sacred. I will not take it out and look at it 
often. I will leave it in a holy place. It will 
be safe there. I will go my way, doing happy, 
common things.’ Can’t you look at your trouble 
that way, Mrs. Rowantree?” 

Mary Cecily turned her misty blue eyes on 
Azalea. 

“ My girl,” she said solemnly, “ I have not yet 
told you of my real trouble.” 

Azalea caught her breath. 

“Well?” she breathed. 

“ Well, they dropped my little mother in the 
sea, a good priest saying the words of the church 
over her. Some were kind to us, but after all it 
was not many who were knowing us. The wild 
weather kept up, and hundreds there were on 
the ship who did not leave their beds at all. 
David and I had no heart for talking, and we 
kept much to ourselves as we had seen our 
mother do. There were rough people all about 


108 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


us, and our ways were gentle, so oftentimes we 
did not feel at home with them. I kept up my 
heart by thinking of David and what I must 
do for him; and now that mother was gone, he 
clung to me all of the time. He could hardly 
breathe without me it seemed, and though I was 
only ten years old, I had the mother-feeling in 
me, and I prized myself for the sake of my little 
child.” 

“ I can understand that,” Azalea murmured 
from her heart. 

“ Well, we got to the landing place at last, 
and I was near suffocated with the beating of 
my heart. I was as afraid of the city as if it had 
been a dragon. The fear of cities always was 
in me, but no city — not Calcutta, not Hongkong 
nor any foreign place — could have seemed 
more terrible to me than New York. 1 For 
David’s sake I must be brave,’ I kept saying to 
myself. ‘ For David’s sake.’ Well, the first and 
second-class passengers were let off, and then 
came our turn. I never did know how many 
hundreds there were of us. We seemed like a 
city-full in ourselves. And if you’ll believe me, 
at the same time, on the other side of the dock, 
another great steamer was unloading. So that 


LITTLE BROTHER 109 

presently we were all mixed — all mixed and 
scattered.” 

“ Yes,” said Azalea, guessing now what was 
coming. 

“ So I lost David,” whispered Mary Cecily; 
“ I lost my little brother. His hand slipped 
from mine and I could not find him. I looked 
for him all that day; I asked everybody, and no 
one could tell me anything about him. At night 
a policeman took me away and put me in the 
house of a woman and told me to sleep and he 
would look. So I stayed in the house that night, 
and the next day I began searching again; and 
the policeman had others looking. But we 
never found him, any of us.” 

“ You never found him at all? ” 

“Never at all. My uncle came on, after I 
had written him, and he searched. But it was 
no use. David was never found ; and they con- 
cluded at last that he had been pushed from the 
wharf into the water and drowned. But I said 
no. I could hear him calling for me in the night 
the way the dead never call. I could feel him 
somewhere, drawing me, drawing me, but I 
could not tell which way to go, or I would have 
run to him across the world.” 


110 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ Of course you would — of course.” Azalea 
drew nearer till she could rest her hand on 
Mary Cecily’s knee. 

“ But we never found him,” she repeated. 
“ So after a while we left the city, my uncle and 
I, and went to the little farm he had in Mary- 
land. He was something of a writer too, like 
my father; and he published a little weekly 
paper. So you see it was an interesting home 
he had brought me to. His wife was one of 
those women who are well pleased to have a 
motherless child to add to her own. She was 
kind to me but she didn’t spoil me because I was 
bounden to her. She set me my tasks and saw 
to it that I did them, and when I was a grown 
girl and showed a little talent for writing I was 
sent to my uncle’s office to help with the making 
of his paper and setting of it up. He drilled me 
in writing and he taught me type-setting, and I 
was content there. I never wanted to take up 
any life of my own. I wanted to be left to 
myself to mourn for David — ” 

“ Oh, but there was nothing in that,” broke in 
Azalea. 

“ Don’t I know it? But sorrow is like sick- 
ness and it can cloud the spirits as sickness 


LITTLE BROTHER 


111 


weakens the body. But for being kept so busy 
by my wise relatives, I should have lost my mind 
altogether, I make no doubt. But they were a 
large family, and there was teasing and laughing 
and tricks going on as well as work, and that 
was my medicine. But even with all that, I was 
forever looking down the road, thinking one of 
those New York detectives would be bringing 
my little brother back to me. Whenever the 
letters came I sat frozen with hope that wouldn’t 
be hope, till they were given out. I kept think- 
ing that one would be handed to me that would 
tell me David was found. But none ever was.” 

“ But you grew happier after a time,” pro- 
tested Azalea, who could not long endure the 
thought of sorrow. “ You must have! See how 
happy everything is with you now.” 

“ Yes,” admitted Mary Cecily, “ I did grow 
happier after a time, though as I say, I didn’t 
really want to. But I got to be a young woman, 
and Bryan Rowantree came along. He was the 
younger son of a fine English family — Irish on 
his mother’s side, however — and he came over 
to America to better himself. He heard of my 
uncle’s little paper and looked him up, thinking 
he might be wanted to lend a hand, but my uncle 


112 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


liked to run things his own way, quietly and 
casually, as he used to put it. So he didn’t take 
the young man into partnership — but I did.” 

She smiled down at Azalea happily, and the 
girl could see that whatever others might think, 
Rowantree’s wife could see nothing but the 
advantages of the marriage. 

“ I say he was young,” she went on. “ He 
was, however, twelve years older than myself. 
But I have always been a poor thing and thank- 
ful to have some one to lean on.” 

“ Mercy me,” thought Azalea, “ can it be she 
thinks she’s leaning on that man? I thought it 
was just the other way.” She kept her eyes fixed 
on the ground carefully, afraid that if she lifted 
them her thoughts would be read in her face. 

“ We had a sweet little wedding,” said Mary 
Cecily dreamily, “ and then we came away 
together. We had no particular place to go to, 
but Bryan said he thought he would like to 
wander for a time. That suited me, too. But 
after a little we got tired of that. Besides, we 
saw that our money would soon give out. So, 
when we heard of this woodland up here for 
sale for almost nothing, we bought it. The 


LITTLE BROTHER 


113 


Rowantrees were once great landed proprietors, 
but in recent years they had been obliged to live 
in cities, and it had not suited them. At least, 
it did not suit my husband. So here we are. 
We lead a very peaceful, retired life. Mr. 
Rowantree loves quiet, as he said to you. And 
I’ve the children if ever I feel the loneliness 
stealing on me.” 

A call sounded through the woods. 

“ They think we’re lost,” smiled Mrs. Rowan- 
tree. “ And we must be getting back to the house, 
but before we go I want you to promise me that 
you will not speak of my sorrow. It’s a queer 
way I have with me, not liking to see sympathy 
save in the eyes of my own chosen friends. Come 
now, and I hope and pray Miss Pace will not 
accuse me of rudeness ! ” 

“ Aunt Zillah? Never! ” said Azalea. “ It’s 
a wonderful story you’ve told me, Mrs. Rowan- 
tree — so sad I can hardly believe it — much 
sadder than mine, and that is sad enough. Not 
that I feel sad,” she added hastily. “ Since I 
became a McBirney I’m a very happy girl.” 

“ But you’re not really a McBirney, are you? 
Those good mountain people haven’t really 
adopted you? ” 


114 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ Not by law, ma’am,” smiled Azalea. “ But 
what does that matter if we love each other? ” 

“ And you have Miss Carin and her parents 
for your friends. That must be a great comfort 
to you.” 

“ Oh, indeed, they’re like flowers in the gar- 
den of the world,” cried Azalea with one of her 
pretty extravagant speeches. 

“ Indeed, I believe it, my dear. Yes, we are 
coming,” she called. “ Did you think I had 
locked this dryad up in an oak tree? ” she asked 
playfully, her arm about Azalea, as they came 
up to the gallery. Her husband threw a quick 
glance at her. He knew how to read the 
changes on her emotional face. 

“ Tut,” he said under his breath to her. 
“David again! You shouldn’t, mavourneen.” 

“ She’s a treasure, Bryan,” his wife whispered, 
indicating Azalea with a little nod of the head. 
“ It never could do any harm to ease my heart 
to her.” 

“ Miss Pace thinks they must all be on their 
way, Mary Cecily,” he said aloud. “ I must 
have the horses brought ’round.” 

“ Oh, have a taste of tea before you start,” 
pleaded Mrs. Rowantree. But Aunt Zillah as 


LITTLE BROTHER 


115 


politely declined. So, presently, Zillah Pace 
and her three young people rode quietly beneath 
the lengthening shadows through the sweet 
smelling woodland to their home. This time, 
Aunt Zillah and Carin rode together, and Aza- 
lea’s pony tried in vain to keep pace with 
Keefe’s raw-boned horse. Keefe had much to 
say of the day. 

“ I was very happy the little time I stayed 
there at Rowantree Hall,” he said. u I under- 
stood their ways — understood the things they 
do and the things they don’t do — and what’s 
more I perfectly understand why they don’t do 
them. Rowantree himself amuses me, yet I’m 
fond of him. Mrs. Rowantree — well, she’s a 
little miracle.” 

“ Oh, she is,” cried Azalea. “ How she 
works — and doesn’t mind. What ducks the 
children are! And how contented they all 
seem in that solitude!” 

“ Might be Highland chieftains,” laughed 
Keefe. “ And how do you suppose they live? ” 

“ I can’t imagine,” Azalea admitted. “ Does 
he farm? ” 

“ A little — a very little. It’s she who thinks 
out the things that keep the wolf from the door. 


116 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


To be sure he has a little money coming from 
England now and then; but it’s Mrs. Rowantree 
with her little movable sawmill, which she pays 
men to run, who really keeps the flour in the 
barrel. Then she raises chickens, has a cow or 
two, a vegetable patch and all that. But best 
of all, she knows how to do without and yet be 
happy, and she’s bringing up the children in 
the same way. You noticed, they never apol- 
ogized for a thing.” 

“Not a thing! I liked that, Keefe. She 
knew we wouldn’t care how things were. All 
we wanted was themselves.” 

“ Quite right. All we wanted was them- 
selves.” He sighed sharply. “ She makes one 
feel at home, doesn’t she, that little Mary Cecily 
Rowantree? I’ve been a lonely cub, Miss 
Azalea — a queer lonely cub — thrown out of 
the lair by an accident, and not knowing much 
about home. But she does something to me — 
makes me feel as if I’d got back — ” 

He hesitated for a long time. At last Azalea 
prodded him with a “ Got back? ” 

But he did not answer. They rode on then 
in the noisy silence of the woods, rode to the 
sound of falling water, the call of sleepy birds, 


LITTLE BROTHER 


117 


the almost inaudible rustle of the trees and the 
little sharp cries of insects. Keefe saw the 
ladies to their door but he would not come in 
with them. He left them, to go to his tent and 
to boil his own tea in the little iron kettle, which, 
swung from his tripod, had served him on many 
expeditions. He had placed his tent not far 
from the rim of a precipice, though back among 
trees where it would be protected from storms. 
But to-night he abandoned their shelter, and sat 
quite on the rim itself, letting the rolling earth 
fill him with wonder. The stars swept by, a 
young sickle moon arose, the world faded from 
rosy gray to purple, from purple to the soft 
starlit gloom of a summer night. And still he 
sat there, dreaming, wondering, planning, 
longing. 

Most of all he wondered why it was that there 
were so few thoughts really worth thinking 
which one could put into words. 


CHAPTER VII 


“ DOING GOOD ” 

The little silvery shower which had helped to 
make Sunday charming, sent along a number of 
less agreeable members of its family the follow- 
ing day. Azalea and Carin opened their eyes 
upon a rain-smitten landscape, and down the 
chimney blew a damp wind. It made a failure 
of breakfast, for the kitchen stove absolutely 
refused to draw, and it sent the girls out finally 
in a pelting shower. 

“You are foolish to go,” Miss Zillah told 
them, really quite out of patience with them for 
the first time. “ There will be no pupils at the 
school to-day. You might much better stay at 
home and keep dry. I can’t think that your 
parents would approve of your going out in 
such a storm.” 

But what was the use of having rubber boots 
and raincoats and rubber caps and umbrellas, if 
they were not to be used? So the girls argued 
till they finally won Miss Zillah’s consent. 

118 


DOING GOOD 


119 


It really was rather a lark to be out in a 
buffeting storm like that. They could hardly 
see for the downpour, but they ran on, heads 
lowered, skirts gathered close, and were pres- 
ently in the little schoolhouse. 

“ We’ll have to light the lamps,” said Azalea. 
“ Not a soul could see to study in this place 
to-day.” 

“ You remind me of Ma McBirney,” said 
Carin, wiping the rain from her face. “ Your 
first thought is always to make the room bright. 
Now me, I think of myself first.” 

Azalea took off her dripping coat, removed 
the rubber boots from her, slippered feet, 
released her head from its cap and looked about 
her, shivering a little. 

“Do you know why?” she asked. “ In the 
old days when my own mamma and I were 
wanderers, going from place to place with that 
terrible show, we were often so cold and 
wretched that no words could describe it. Yet 
mamma always tried to make some sort of a 
little cosy spot for me — some sort of a nest that 
I could get into. It might only be a ragged com- 
fortable in a corner of the wagon; or it 
might be a place under a tree near the camp 


120 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


fire. She didn’t seem to care how she got along, 
if only she could make me happy. I realize 
now how often she went without food to feed 
me well, and how she gave me the best of every- 
thing. I was told about that by poor old Betty 
Bowen that time Sisson kidnapped me.” 

“ Oh, don’t talk about that, Azalea,” cried her 
friend, throwing her arms about her and kissing 
her on the cheek with a sort of desperate tender- 
ness. “ I can’t bear it. Oh, those nights that 
we didn’t know where you were! ” 

“ I only speak of it,” said Azalea, holding her 
friend close to her, “ because that explains why 
I want to make every place cheerful. I can’t 
stand gloom and chill and hunger — can’t stand 
them for myself or anyone else. And then — 
don’t laugh at me, Carin, please — there’s 
another reason. I want to pass on to others all 
the goodness that has been done to me these last 
lovely months. Oh, Carin, I want to do good 
the way your father and mother do. I’d like 
to give up my whole life to it. You see, I’ve 
really no family. I’m very queerly placed in 
life. There’s gentle blood in me, and restless 
blood. I’m different from Ma and Pa McBirney 
and dear Jim. I can’t get around that, can I? 


DOING GOOD 


121 


No matter how much I love them, no matter 
how long we live together, I’ll always be dif- 
ferent. Yet, on the other hand, I’ll not know the 
sort of people that Colonel Atherton’s grand- 
daughter would be expected to know. They’ll 
not come into my life. I — I can’t expect to 
marry — when I grow up — the sort of — ” 

“ Nonsense,” cried Carin impetuously. 
“ You’ll marry whoever you wish. And you’ll 
meet all sorts of people at my house — people 
who will appreciate you.” 

But Azalea shook her head. 

“ No,” she said; “ my lot has been cast in with 
that of simple folk. I’m glad of it, mind you, 
and proud to be loved by Mother McBirney. 
It’s the sweetest thing that ever happened to me. 
But all the same, I think I shall have to choose 
some sort of a career.” 

As she talked, she tidied the schoolroom, 
lighted the lamps, and ventured on a little blaze 
in the fireplace to send away the chill. Carin, 
less used to such services, sat fascinatedly watch- 
ing her friend. 

“ A career! ” she sighed. “ Oh, Azalea, what 
do you mean by that? Of course I believe girls 
should have careers,” she added hastily. “ I 


122 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


want to be an artist myself, and if that old dairy 
doesn’t use up every ounce of Annie Laurie’s 
energy, I suppose she’ll be a singer. Anyway, 
she could be, if she chose. But what would you 
do, Zalie? ” 

“ Just do good,” said Azalea simply. 

“ But that wouldn’t earn a living for you. 
Weren’t you thinking of earning a living? ” 

“ It might,” said Azalea. “ It would be a 
great living to have people coming to you for 
help and to know you could drive the misery 
out of them — and the devils out of them, too.” 

“ But the money — ” continued Carin. 

“ There would be enough, probably,” said 
Azalea, still not willing to give attention to that 
part of the subject. “ I feel, Carin, that some- 
how there would be money enough.” 

Just then the schoolhouse door blew open with 
a sweep of rain-laden wind and it took the com- 
bined strength of the two girls to close it again. 

“ Aunt Zillah was quite right,” said Carin 
breathlessly after this was accomplished. “ We 
ought never to have come, Azalea.” 

“ Oh,” cried Azalea, “there’s some one trying 
to get in, Carin. Did you bolt the door? ” 


“ DOING GOOD ” 123 

“ Yes — it wouldn’t stay shut otherwise. Help 
me open it, Azalea. The bolt sticks.” 

It came back so suddenly at last that Azalea 
almost lost her footing, and the next moment, 
half-blinded by the storm, her poor garments 
soaked and dripping, her blouse held together 
by her single hand, Paralee Panther stood in 
the room. If she had been sullen on other days, 
she was tragic now. So storm-beaten in body 
and in spirit was she, that she looked as if all 
the world was her foe. Indeed, she always 
seemed to be thinking that, and now as she stood 
there, frowning from under her dripping hair, 
the gentle girls at whom she glowered fairly 
shrank from her. 

Then Azalea remembered, as by a swift light 
of the spirit, how misfortune could make one 
misrepresent one’s self. She thought of herself 
as she had been in the old days, when, dust- 
stained, weary, hungry, shy and often resentful, 
she had slunk along beside the wagons of Sisson’s 
All Star Show, and of how in reality she had 
been the same as she was now, friendly and good, 
loving cleanliness and beauty and all seemliness. 

She went forward to the girl and seized her 
hand. 


124 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ Oh, Paralee,” she said, “ Pm so glad now 
that we came. Miss Pace thought no one would 
be here; but you started, I suppose, before the 
storm began. Come to the fire, do. We can 
take off your dress and hang it on the chair 
backs — ” 

But she had made a mistake. The girl drew 
back, her eyes full of that hurt, animal-like 
anger which was almost always there. 

“ I won’t take off my dress,” she said. Azalea 
guessed why — that she would not have them 
see her makeshifts for underclothing. 

“ Perhaps it would be better not,” Azalea 
said, as if having thought the matter over, she 
reached the same conclusion. “ Come to the 
fire, then. You will soon dry.” 

She turned away to give the girl a chance to 
make herself comfortable in her own manner, 
and lighted the alcohol stove beneath the shin- 
ing brass teakettle. She and Carin kept a little 
store of supplies at school — dainties designed to 
help out their light luncheons — and now she 
made a selection from these, and spreading a 
tray daintily, put it before Paralee. There was 
the steaming tea, crackers, cookies, cheese, and 
candied ginger. 


DOING GOOD 


125 


“ Such a queer little meal,” she laughed 
apologetically, “ but it will help to get the damp 
out of you. You must feel quite like a sponge, 
Paralee.” 

The girl looked up from under her heavy 
brows. 

“ What is a sponge? ” she demanded. 

Carin heard Azalea stammeringly trying to 
make clear to her pupil the nature of a sponge, 
and discreetly withdrew to the most distant part 
of the schoolroom and began busying herself by 
making a sketch of the storm-tossed trees in the 
wild purple light. She heard Azalea’s voice 
going on and on, kindly, gently, insistently; 
heard Paralee’s gruff answers; but the rain and 
the wind drowned the words. It was only when 
Azalea called to her that she learned of the 
nature of the conversation. Paralee was stand- 
ing with half dried garments before the fire. 
She had eaten her little repast, and with her one 
poor hand was brushing back the hair that 
straggled about her face. 

“ Paralee,” said Azalea, “ wants to be a 
teacher, Carin. She has to make her own living, 
and that is the way she means to do it.” 

Not a gleam of Azalea’s eye, not the barest 


126 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


flicker of the voice, told that she thought such 
an ambition outrageous. The heavy-faced, half- 
clothed child, so dark and hateful, so ugly and 
suspicious, might have been the embodiment of 
light for all that Azalea’s manner betrayed. 
Once more Garin’s affectionate appreciation of 
her friend went out in swift response. 

“ Does she?” asked Carin in the same friendly 
tone. “ Well, we’ll teach her what we know, 
and then she can go to some one better fitted to 
make a teacher of her.” 

They could see the girl peering up furtively 
from under her hair, wondering if it could be 
possible that they believed in her. No one ever 
had. But obstinately, passionately, in the face 
of all things, she believed in herself. 

“ I can’t do nothing else,” she said in her deep 
voice. “ I hain’t got but one hand.” 

“ She lost the other,” said Azalea in her even, 
pleasant voice, “ when she was trying to shoot 
rabbits for the family to eat. She and her grand- 
mother have come down with her brother w T hile 
he works at the sawmill Mrs. Rowantree has set 
up on the Ravenel Branch.” 

“ He wouldn’t come ’less I did, too,” explained 
Paralee. “ He didn’t like to leave home.” 


DOING GOOD ” 


127 


What could the home be that the brother of 
this girl would hate to leave, Carin wondered. 
It seemed as if Paralee must have come out of 
a cave rather than a house. 

“ We Panthers has always lived by ourselves,” 
the girl said in half angry explanation. “Jake 
hain’t used to talking to strange folks. And he 
didn’t have no proper clothes for leaving home.” 

“ Panther is a strange name, isn’t it?” asked 
Carin. “ Are there many families of your name 
in these mountains, Paralee?” 

“ It hain’t our name,” returned the girl. “ Our 
name’s Marr. My granddad was a fighter, he 
was. He kilt six men. It was a war. They 
called him the Panther of Soco River. Then 
they called us all Panthers. We don’t care!” 
she added defiantly. “ One name suits us as 
well as t’other.” 

“ Her father,” explained Azalea, “ is par- 
alyzed from a tree having fallen on him. His 
home is away out on the tongue of the Soco 
mountain — so far away it can only be reached 
by ‘ nag travel.’ Paralee says no doctor ever 
goes to see him.” 

“ Once,” said Paralee, “ for two years nobody 


128 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


come up the road, and we didn’t go nowhere. 
For two whole years! ” 

The girls let the words rest on the air for a 
moment, taking in their meaning. 

“ How in heaven’s name do you live? ” asked 
Carin. 

“ We live ’cause we don’t die. We git up and 
go to bed,” said the girl. “ It gits so still up 
there we stop talking. Why, we ’most forget 
the way to say words.” 

“ I should think you would,” said Azalea. 
“ But what do you have to eat? How do you 
make money? ” 

“ We don’t need no money. Not much, any- 
how. We raise some corn and two or three 
hogs ; and we have some chickens and a garden 
patch. Ma does some weaving. Pa used to 
hunt. Then, when he got hurt, I tried hunting.” 
She looked down at her maimed arm. “ That’s 
all,” she said bitterly. “ The Panthers is well 
named. They just live up a tree.” She gave a 
short, sharp laugh. 

“ How ever did your brother and you come to 
leave home? ” demanded Azalea. “ Didn’t they 
need you there? ” 

“ Needed us terrible. But I couldn’t do work 


DOING GOOD 


129 


to ’mount to nothing, and Jake was just hanging 
’round doing chores Pete could do as well. I 
goaded Jake on to coming down to the sawmill. 
I thought he might get some comforts for pa. 
And grandma, she’d got so mean and worried ma 
so, I got her to come along.” She paused for a 
moment, and then gave way to an outbreak of 
rage and misery. “ We was getting to be like 
stumps,” she cried. “ That’s what we was get- 
ting like — just like the stumps out in the clear- 
ing. You couldn’t tell we was humans. I — I 
couldn’t stand it no longer.” As she stood facing 
them in her ugliness and wretchedness, .with her 
great mass of hair hanging about her half-bare 
shoulders, she seemed to be mysteriously 
redeemed from mere brutishness by this rebel- 
lion. Out of that sodden silence and poverty, 
that shame of inaction, her protest and purpose 
had sprung into life. For a moment the girls 
were silent with sympathy. Then Azalea said: 

“ We’ll teach you, Paralee, early and late. 
We’ll help you in every way we can.” 

“ Oh, we will,” agreed Carin. “ And we can 
do so much more than you think, Paralee. 
Paralee?” she repeated. “ Such an unusual 
name. Is it a — a family name? ” 


130 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


Paralee Panther gave a curious shrug. 

“No!” she said with an accent of disgust. 
“ That ain’t a name any more than Panther. 
They didn’t name me at all — called me Babe. 
When I was six, I got tired of it. I wanted a 
name — cried for a name — but they didn’t seem 
to think of none. I invented that name — 
Paralee. I thought it awful pretty then. I 
don’t think so now,” she added bluntly. “ I 
think it’s a fool name. I wish my name was 
anything else — anything! ” 

“ I have a middle name that I don’t need,” 
said Carin with a laugh. “ It’s Louisa. Now, 
what if I should give that to you? ‘ Louisa 
Marr! ’ How would that sound? ” 

“ Mr. Summers is coming up to see us by 
and by,” said Azalea, taking hold of Paralee’s 
arm with a girlish squeeze, “ and he can name 
you properly. He’s a Methodist preacher.” 
Paralee nodded. 

“ I know,” she said. “ Once he came to see 
my pa. He said if pa could be got to an X ray, 
or an X ray could be got to him, maybe he’d be 
cured. But it was just talk. He didn’t do noth- 
ing,” she added with a return to her old 
bitterness. 


DOING GOOD ” 


131 


“ Probably he couldn’t do anything,” said 
Azalea, swift to defend the husband of her own 
“ pretend cousin,” Barbara Summers, whom she 
had picked out of all the world to be her “ kin ” 
since she had none of her own. “ Mr. Summers 
is poor, too, and there are many people that he 
must do things for.” 

“ Well, he didn’t do nothing for us,” said the 
girl. Then she brooded for a moment in her 
heavy way. “ And we didn’t do nothing for 
ourselves,” she broke out. “ That was what 
made me mad — we didn’t do nothing for 
ourselves! ” 

“ Your folks didn’t know how,” said Azalea. 
“That was it — they didn’t know how. They 
couldn’t help themselves any more than if they 
had been children.” 

“ That’s what they are,” the girl cried. 
“ They’re children — they don’t know nothing. 
They won’t do nothing. Oh, it’s so awful — not 
to have things to eat; to be like this.” She held 
out her stump of a hand. “To be like dad — 
not able to move! Ain’t it a curse? ” 

“ It must be changed,” said Carin decidedly. 
“ It can be and it shall.” 

“ You don’t know,” replied the mountain girl 


132 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


with a return of despair. “ There’s so much to 
change.” 

“ Braid your hair, Paralee,” commanded 
Azalea. “ Then we’ll have a lesson. I’ll teach 
you more this morning than you ever learned in 
any one lesson in your life. I noticed last week 
that you knew how to study better than anyone 
in the school. You could keep your mind on a 
thing, and that’s much more than half the battle. 
Oh, we’ll make a teacher of you, never fear.” 

So all that long day of wild wind and rain, 
Azalea labored with her pupil. Hitherto, 
teaching had been a pleasant if tiring experi- 
ence. Azalea had felt a cheerful zest in passing 
on her ideas and her good practical knowledge. 
But this morning a holy passion for teaching 
came to her. She poured facts into Paralee’s 
starved mind with the same deep satisfaction 
that she would have given her water had she 
been perishing of thirst. No other pupils came. 
Carin, sitting apart, silent and content with her 
own occupations, did not interrupt them, and 
the mountain girl listened to her ardent young 
teacher, conned her lessons untiringly, and 
throughout the long hours of the school day 
refused to rest. It was as if she had come into 


DOING GOOD 


133 


the house of her own mind; as if she had opened 
up the weed-choked door and crossed the 
threshold, discovering within fair rooms 
undreamed of; as if she had put the shutters 
back from long-closed windows and let the light 
stream in. 

By four o’clock the rain seemed to have beaten 
itself out, and the wind died, too. 

“Study is over!” cried Azalea at length. 
“ Come, Paralee, get your things. Such a day! 
I tell you, anyone who can study as you do will 
make a success. Isn’t it so, Carin? ” 

Carin got up from her letter writing. 

“ Of course it is,” she said. “ And I have 
been writing some letters that ought to help on. 
You must go away to school, Paralee. There 
are boarding schools — ” 

“ What good would they do me? ” demanded 
the girl. “ How could I pay? ” 

“ I have money to be used for such things as 
that,” Carin said gently. “ My father gave it 
to me. I would love to use it for you.” 

“ What could I give you back, then? When 
us Panthers has presents give to us, we pay 
back.” 

“ I have not thought yet,” said Carin seriously, 


134 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ but I will think. I 'will let you pay me back. 
Please, please, don’t think about that now. 
Only study — study — study.” 

“ I wish you didn’t have to go home to-night,” 
said Azalea. “ Couldn’t you stay with us? A 
six mile walk over gullies like those out there 
in the yard doesn’t seem a pleasant prospect.” 

The mountain girl looked at her almost with 
pity — as if for once she understood something 
which her instructress did not. 

“ Do you think I’ll mind gullies? ” she asked. 

“ No,” confessed Azalea; “ no, I don’t.” 

Paralee Panther had worn neither jacket nor 
hat, and in her thin blouse and short skirt, bare- 
footed, her great braids, half undone, strag- 
gling down her back, she swung off down her 
mountain trail. Her heavy, awkward body gave 
the impression of great strength and for all of 
her awkwardness, whoever looked at her felt 
that she would be brave. 

“ That’s the best day’s work we’ve done yet,” 
said Azalea at last, turning rather wearily to find 
her things. But Carin had them ready for her, 
and when the schoolhouse was locked, the two 
friends made their way single file beneath the 
dripping branches and across the noisy brook, 


DOING GOOD 


135 


thankful for their good rubber boots and coats. 

“ I can’t think where Keefe has been to-day,” 
said Carin. “ It is just the sort of a day you’d 
have expected him to come. We might have 
needed him, if the storm had grown worse. 
Weren’t you surprised that he didn’t look in on 
us?” 

“ Yes, I was,” confessed Azalea. “ It wasn’t 
like him to stay away on a stormy day.” 

Carin laughed — and her laugh had a touch 
of vexation. 

“ How do you know it wasn’t like him? ” she 
demanded. “ You know very little about him, 
really. You mustn’t go on your impressions too 
much, my dear.” 

“ I know,” confessed Azalea. “ Everyone 
tells me that. Pa McBirney is forever saying 
it. Just the same I know it wasn’t like Keefe to 
stay away on a stormy day like this and I’d feel 
better if I knew where he was this minute.” 

They should have been in sight of the Oriole’s 
Nest by this time, but the clouds, which had 
lifted for a time, were settling down again in 
white drifting masses. They had not, of course, 
been able to see the mountain peaks all day; but 
now the trees began to disappear as if willed out 


136 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


of existence by some wonderful necromancer; 
then their very pathway before them seemed 
swallowed up; and finally each looked to the 
other like a ghost. 

“Goodness, but it is uncanny!” said Carin. 
“ I’m glad we haven’t far to go. We could get 
lost in our own doorway.” 

It was then that they heard the cheering 
whistle of Keefe O’Connor. It came, appar- 
ently, from the cottage. 

“ He’s been with Aunt Zillah,” said Azalea 
with a little sigh of relief. “ That was nice of 
him, wasn’t it? A day like this she’s sure to be 
lonely.” 

She gave a blithe answer to the whistle, and 
seizing Carin’s hand, ran on swift feet to the 
cottage, laughing as the billowing mist parted 
and then closed like water behind her. The 
little cabin could not be discerned till she and 
Carin were fairly upon it. Then they saw the 
dull glow of a light in the window, and groping 
for the door, found the handle just at the moment 
Keefe opened it. 

“ Here they are, Miss Pace,” he called, “ quite 
safe and sound. I’ve looked in at you several 


“ DOING GOOD ” 137 

times to-day, if you want to know, but I thought 
my room was better than my company.” 

“ Oh, my, but I’m glad you’re home,” cried 
Aunt Zillah, helping them ofif with their things. 
“ I declare, it’s getting darker every minute. 
Why, the mist isn’t white any more — it’s 
black! ” 

“ We’re in the heart of a black cloud, that’s 
why,” said Keefe cheerily. “ Well, we’ve wood 
and oil and food inside, so what do we care? ” 

“ He’s been working around the place all 
day,” said Aunt Zillah. “ And I must say I was 
glad to have him take a hand. Mr. McEvoy is 
an excellent man, but he certainly does carry 
his 1 take-it-easy ’ philosophy to extremes. But 
even he is a comfort. In my opinion, every 
house needs a man around it to make it look 
right.” 


CHAPTER VIII 
THE WAR 

Well, but it was a snug little cabin! The 
mist-wraiths might drift by the window, might 
even pause to thrust their spectral faces against 
the pane, but it mattered nothing to those who 
were safe and snug within. Aunt Zillah cooked 
her special stew for supper, and served it with 
potatoes baked in the coals, raised biscuit, and 
honey and dainties for dessert Keefe had 
brought out his borrowed guitar and kept the 
room ringing with his melodies. The girls saw 
that the occasion was to be a festive one, and put 
on the brightest frocks they could find in their 
trunks. 

Then, with the fire leaping and the candles 
and lamps lighted and supper laid out with the 
pink dishes and the white doilies, the place was 
charming indeed. To Miss Zillah, for the first 
time in her life removed from oversight of her 
elder sister, and playing at being the mother of 
a family, it was an experience that made her 
138 


THE WAR 


139 


shy, middle-aged heart leap within her. To 
Carin, used to luxury and beauty and her 
parent’s unceasing care, it was an adventure in 
independence; to Azalea, accustomed to 
changes, to people of many sorts, to both rough 
and smooth living, it was one more chapter in 
a book destined to be filled with curious inci- 
dents. To Keefe — but let him speak for 
himself. 

“ This place,” he said, “ looks to me singularly 
like Paradise. My own particular habitation 
is as damp and cold as the Mammoth Cave. My 
bed is done up in oilskins, and my easel is under 
the bed. Every stick of wood I have is 
drenched, and the field mice have got at my 
food.” 

“ Poor orphan,” laughed Carin, and then 
stopped on the word, wondering if she had not 
spoken the truth concerning him. He had told 
nothing of himself, save that he hoped to be an 
artist, and that he already had studied at the 
New York Academy of Design. 

“ Well,” he retorted, giving no heed to her 
embarrassment, “ I congratulated myself when 
I borrowed that tent from Mr. Rowantree. I 
saw it wouldn’t keep water out. I said to myself, 


140 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


‘ The first time we have a downpour I’ll have 
to take refuge with the nearest neighbor.’ I 
saw to it that you were that neighbor. To-night, 
of course, I shall put in an application for the 
guest chamber at Mis’ Cassie McEvoy’s, and I’ll 
sleep in the room with the medicine-bottle 
decoration, but until the clock tells me it is 
really night, here I stay. Don’t I, Miss Pace? ” 

“ Indeed you do,” she returned. “ The 
laborer is worthy of his hire.” 

She had got over the slight prejudice she felt 
against him at first meeting. He was too oblig- 
ing, too amiable, too wistful, for her to keep him 
at a distance. Miss Zillah’s heart was a particu- 
larly soft one, though for conscience sake she 
could be stern. 

“ I hear you had only one pupil to-day,” she 
said to the girls when they were seated at the 
table. 

“ And she underwent a curious transforma- 
tion,” said Carin. “ She came to us Paralee 
Panther. She went away Louisa Marr. Of 
course we can’t call her that just yet, as people 
wouldn’t know whom we were talking about. 
But when she goes away to school, as I mean 
she shall, she’ll bear a proper Christian name.” 


THE WAR 


141 


Between Azalea and Carin the grim story of 
the Panther’s life was told. 

“ And now,” concluded Azalea, “ my heart is 
set on rescuing that poor Mr. Panther. Why, 
it will be like bringing a man from a mine — or 
taking him from the Bastille. Oh, we mustn’t 
wait. We must set about the rescue at once! ” 

“ It won’t be so easy as you imagine,” said 
Miss Zillah, with a sigh. “ When people get 
away down like that, they don’t seem to want to 
be disturbed. They enjoy their misery. You 
needn’t be surprised if after you get to the poor 
man, you find him quite unwilling to let you 
do anything for him.” 

“ Oh, we won’t even think of such a thing as 
that,” cried Azalea, with her usual impatience 
at the mention of obstacles. “ When can we go 
to him, Keefe? ” 

“ Not before Saturday, of course. We ought 
to take a physician with us, oughtn’t we? ” 

“ Of course we ought,” said Azalea. “ Carin, 
couldn’t we telegraph back home and get 
Doctor Stevenson to come up? ” 

So they wrote out a telegram which was sent 
to Bee Tree the following day and from there 
telephoned to the nearest telegraph station. But 


142 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


to their disappointment they received the reply 
from Dr. Stevenson that he had a very critical 
case in hand which he could not leave. Carin 
wired elsewhere, but without success, and they 
were on the point of postponing the visit when, 
on Friday, there dawned upon their view the 
familiar figure of Haystack Thompson, their 
old friend with the fiddle. With his “ hay- 
stack ” mop of hair in wilder confusion than 
ever — for it had grown grayer and more wiry 
every month — with his kind, keen, rolling eyes 
looking extraordinarily large, and his spare 
frame thinned, as it seemed, to the very bone, he 
appeared at the schoolhouse just before closing, 
and the moment Azalea’s eyes fell on him, she 
felt that he was the person to help them out. 
Just how he would do it she did not stop to 
think, but ever since she had known him she 
had counted on his power to help. 

He was lending his aid to some one at that 
moment evidently, for by the hand he led a small 
boy whom neither Carin nor Azalea had seen 
before, but the moment that Azalea noticed Bud 
Coulter starting from his seat, she knew the new- 
comer for Skully Simms, the nephew of the 
Coulters’ hereditary enemy, and the boy who 


THE WAR 


143 


had on several occasions peeped in at the win- 
dows of the schoolroom which he dared not 
enter. 

All week things had gone moderately well. 
The school now had twenty-four pupils, one of 
them a girl older than her teachers, another a 
married woman, Mrs. McIntosh, who, having 
brought her painfully shy little daughter to 
school had been obliged to stay with her. Mrs. 
McIntosh had at first meant only to look on, 
but the example set by the children had been 
too much for her, and she was now conning her 
first reader beside an eight year old girl. Aza- 
lea and Carin had almost ceased looking for 
trouble, and it was with a sharp shock of alarm 
that they saw Bud Coulter spring to his feet 
and shake a hard young fist in the direction of 
the quivering Skully. 

“No Simms can’t come to this here school 
while I’m here! ” he shouted. “ You git out o’ 
here, Skully Simms, you hear?” 

Simms cast one glance behind him as if for 
flight, but the firm hand of his friend Haystack 
Thompson upon his shoulder held him; then 
the second glance made him aware of all the 
children rising from their seats, of the flaming 


144 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


eyes and distorted mouth of Bud Coulter, and 
the next moment all of his fears vanished in a 
flare of the old inherited hate. He drew in his 
breath sharply through his teeth, leaped for- 
ward, all bunched up like an animal, and the 
next thing that anybody knew, the two boys were 
struggling together in the center of the 
schoolroom. 

The fiddler might have managed these two 
boys, but he saw in a moment that he would 
have trouble coping with what was likely to 
follow. For generations the neighbors who bore 
the names of the children within that school had 
taken sides in the long and dark struggle between 
the Simms and the Coulters, and now, in a flash, 
all their old loyalty to the “ mean fighters ” of 
their mountain was upon them. They leaped to 
their feet, got from the floor on to the seats, 
shrieking and stamping to cheer on their favor- 
ites. It was not a “ scrap.” It was a war — an 
old war — in which men of both names had 
fallen, and for which they all thought it honor- 
able to fight to the finish. 

Azalea, sitting stark still at her desk, saw, 
with wide-stretched eyes, her peaceful school- 
room turned into something resembling a cave 


THE WAR 


145 


of angry wildcats. Moreover, she knew enough 
about such quarrels to imagine what the outcome 
might be. 

“ Carin,” she shrilled to her friend who had 
turned from the blackboard and stood paralyzed 
at what she beheld, “ we must think — we must 
think!” 

But there was little time for thinking. They 
could see that in a few moments more every boy 
in the room would be at the throat of some 
other boy, all for the glory of the old war cries : 
“ Coulter! ” “ Simms! ” 

Just then, as Azalea was discovering how 
unlikely her “ thinking ” was to be of any use, 
an extraordinary sound smote her ears. It 
rolled out like thunder, it came in volleys like 
pistol shots, it was so strange, so loud, so mock- 
ing, that all save the fight-crazed boys at grips 
on the floor turned to see what it was. 

And what they saw was Haystack Thompson 
laughing ! 

He was leaning against the door post and he 
was laughing as if he were Jove and could find 
nothing half so amusing as the capers of earth- 
men. He laughed on and on, more and more 
mockingly, more and more terribly. His mirth 


146 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


was an insult to those who were engaged in that 
senseless combat. It held them in contempt; it 
made nothing of them. The children, amazed, 
fixed their eyes on him. They did not like that 
laughter. It raged and roared at their ancient 
mountain quarrel; it put them among the fools 
of the world. Their anger turned from each 
other to the man. They forgot the writhing 
boys upon the floor, and drew towards Haystack 
Thompson, resentment in their faces. 

Just then, they were given another surprise. 
Azalea had at last thought to some purpose. No 
one saw her save Carin, as she took the full 
water pail from the bench and advanced with it 
toward these last silly clansmen of the Simms 
and Coulters; but Carin, quick to catch the idea, 
seized a second pail, and a moment later a deluge 
of water descended upon the fighters, and two 
gasping, strangling boys, their grip relaxed, lay 
upon the floor. 

Haystack Thompson was a quick-witted ally. 
He bounded forward and grasping Coulter by 
the shirt collar — a stout shirt it was, made 
of home-spun — plumped him down in a seat, 
then seeing him still in the throes of strangula- 
tion, proceeded to pound him lustily on the 


THE WAR 


147 


back. Azalea, meantime, had pulled the smaller 
boy to his feet. He was bleeding at the nose; 
one eye was closed and he was blubbering and 
choking. She wiped his face with a firm and 
determined hand, and led him to the front of 
the room. 

“ Go for more water,” she commanded, find- 
ing that the blood still spurted from the poor 
injured nose. The children held back sullenly, 
but Paralee Panther picked up a pail and went 
to do her bidding. The fiddler’s fearful 
laughter having ceased, a strange, shamed quiet 
hung over the room, broken only by the angry 
snortings and sobbing of the two fighters. And 
then the fiddler began to laugh again, but not 
in the old way. This time he laughed as if at 
the funniest joke that man ever heard. He 
began gently, like one amused, he went on to 
heights of wild and reckless mirth which 
reduced the children, and Azalea and Carin 
with them, to helpless, suffering spasms of 
laughter. There was no resisting such mirth. 
It spread like fire, and once alight, it seemed as 
if nothing could ever extinguish it. 

Then, suddenly, the wizard released them 
from the spell. He stopped and looked about 


148 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


him at his helpless victims. He shook his head 
at them sadly as if he regretted their folly, and 
drawing faithful “ Betsy,” his fiddle, the one 
close friend of his lonely life, from its case, began 
to play. It was quiet music, almost like a hymn, 
and kind music, like friendship which endures. 
Paying no attention to the gasps and gurgles of 
those he had led into folly, he went on steadily 
with his playing. Deep, full and rich were the 
chords he played; clear and high and serene 
was the melody, and the troubled laughter died 
before such sounds. Little Simms with his ach- 
ing face and humiliated spirit, was struggling 
to get the better of his sobs. Coulter, the con- 
queror, had folded his arms across his unbut- 
toned shirt and sat there waiting for what might 
happen next. 

What happened next was that Haystack 
Thompson began to talk. He did not cease 
playing, but the music that came from his instru- 
ment was as soft as the summer wind in the trees. 

“ There’s something on my mind,” he said in 
his deep, kind voice, “ that I want to pass on to 
you-all. You’re young and I’m old, and it’s 
fitting that what I’ve learned by living a long 
time should be handed on to you, who ain’t lived 


THE WAR 149 

long and consequently hain’t had the chance to 
make the mistakes I have. 

“ The constitution of the United States says 
that all men are born free and equal. Now, in 
a way that there saying is true, and in another 
way it ain’t. There’s differences in men and in 
the chances that come to them, that can’t be 
gainsaid nor got around. But it is true that all 
men have an equal right to certain things. 
They’ve an equal right to be free, and an equal 
right to the good things God made — to sun and 
air and water and food. They’ve a right to feel 
happy and a right to be good. What’s more, 
they’ve got a right to learning — got a right to 
know what’s hid in books and in Nature. Any- 
body who tries to take away these rights from 
another is a mean cuss. He’s unfitten for other 
men to deal with. He’s got the soul of a wolf, 
and it seems like he should be hunted out of the 
ha’nts of men. Only that wouldn’t do, for then 
we’d be taking away the greatest right of all 
from him — the right to be good. You can’t 
make an outlaw of a man and expect him to be 
good. No, you’ve got to forgive him and help 
him — you’ve got to show him what his rights 
are, what the rights of his neighbors are. 


ISO AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ I’m a mountain man and my forbears were 
mountain men. I know the feelings of folks 
raised in the mountains. I know they’re brave, 
and kind to friends and mean to foes. I know 
they’ve got sense and patience, and that they’ve 
got folly and madness in them too. These here 
quarrels, like the one that broke out a few min- 
utes ago between these two young bantams — 
friends of mine, both of them, and good ban- 
tams — are a wicked waste. That’s what they 
are. They waste human lives and human hap- 
piness. They make enemies out of folks that 
had ought to be friends, and they leave little 
children orphans and make our people the 
laughing stock of the world. 

“ For my part, I don’t wonder that the world 
laughs at them. I laugh at them too. They’re 
so behind the times — they’re so foolish — so 
like the wild animals out there in the mountain. 
They don’t seem to realize what it is to be men 
and to stand up fair and square, taking life and 
rejoicing, and letting other men take it and 
rejoice. They don’t seem to understand that 
hate is like a disease and that it causes rot at 
the heart and makes a man as disgusting as 
rotten fruit or a sick animal. They don’t under- 


THE WAR 


151 


stand it, because they’ve grown up in the blind- 
ness and sin of it. Why, I used to feel like that 
myself. I didn’t come of a quarreling family, 
and us Thompsons had no war of our own, but 
we took sides with them that had wars, and I’d 
have been as silly as the rest of you if I hadn’t 
been taught better by — ” he hesitated and 
looked about him with a half-shy smile, drew 
his bow with thrilling resonance thrice across 
the deepest strings of his fiddle, and went on — 
u by my old fiddle here. Maybe you’ll under- 
stand and maybe you won’t. Music has laws. 
They are laws that run through everything 
that’s good and true — they run through the 
things you’re studying there in your books and 
they run through Nature too. They come from 
God and if we study them right they help us to 
know that we’re God’s children. 

“ I’ve had to study it all-out for myself, but 
I know what I know. And the grandest thing 
I know is that every man has an equal right to 
his life, to his liberty and to his learning. You 
may be friends and you may be foes, but life 
and liberty and learning are things that friend 
and foe have equal rights to — equal rights! 
Think of it awhile. Think of it as you walk 


152 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


up and down this here mountain side. Think of 
it when you go to bed at night. I’m an old 
man — an old mountain man — and you’re just 
as good as my kin, you-all are. And I tell you, 
it will be a shame to you what folks will spread 
over the whole countryside if you drive these 
two young ladies away when they’ve given up 
their ease and their friends for the whole sum- 
mer long to come up here to learn you.” 

He ceased speaking, but his bow continued 
its magic movement back and forth across the 
strings. For a moment or two he played a 
curious melody with sharp, bright notes, like 
the sparks from a blazing pine. Then he spoke 
again. 

“ Skully Simms ain’t got no pa; he ain’t got 
no ma. He lives with his uncle and makes out 
the best he can. He’s pretty much alone, and it 
ain’t natural for children to be alone. All the 
rest of you can go to homes where there is folks 
waiting for you. But this boy has just his uncle. 
That ain’t much like having your ma and your 
brothers and sisters and your pa watching out 
to see you coming home and speeding you on 
your way. He’s been wanting to come up here 
to school ever since it opened. He has come up 


THE WAR 


153 


here and peered in the windows, and honed to 
come in. But he didn’t durst. Why? Because 
some of his folks, that perhaps he never so much 
as laid eyes on, took a dislike to some of 
Coulter’s folks, that Coulter never knew. Do 
you wonder it made me laugh and mock? ” 

He played on, happily. The tune took danc- 
ing feet to itself and set the hearts if not the feet 
of the children, to a gay rhythm. Once he lifted 
the bow. 

“ Do you wonder? ” he thundered at them in 
the pause. Then he went on with the merry 
tune. And now, indeed, the feet of the children 
began to keep time. 

“ Say, Coulter,” he cried as if he were calling 
out the numbers of a dance, “ will you cut it 
out? ” 

Coulter, never a hangdog, sat with his arms 
still folded. His blue eyes met the old fiddler’s 
steadily. 

“ Coulter, you’ve got brains. You’re not a 
dolt. You see the point of what I told you. Cut 
it out, Coulter, will you, for the sake of these 
here young ladies, and for my sake, and for the 
sake of learning, Coulter!” 

How happy the music was — how far away 


154 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


from hate and meanness and grudging! Coulter 
looked squarely across at poor little Simms, who 
seemed very small and thin. His spare arms 
showed through his torn shirt; his wisp of a 
face was marred and blackened by Coulter’s 
fist. Suddenly, Bud Coulter saw the point. Yes, 
“ l’arnin’ ” was a thing that had neither to do 
with friend or foe. 

“ Cut it out, Coulter?” questioned Haystack, 
vociferously. 

“ Yessir,” called back Coulter. “ If he wants 
to come to school, I’ll keep my hands off him.” 

“ Honor bright? ” 

“Yessir. When I give my word, I keep it.” 

“ Glory be! ” shouted Haystack. And “ Glory 
be! ” shouted “ Betsy,” the violin. 

“ School over? ” queried Haystack. 

Azalea nodded. 

“ School’s over,” announced the fiddler. 
“ And this is where we march.” 

He started down the aisle, his huge head with 
its wild hair bent above the violin, and from 
the little great instrument came the sounds of 
marching feet. They were victorious feet; feet 
marching in brotherhood; faithful, determined 
feet. Falteringly, shyly, the children fell in 


THE WAR 


155 


with him. It was not, indeed, in human power 
to resist that march. Carin, joining with light 
step, Azalea, marching more seriously, courage 
and determination in her face, removed the last 
hesitation of the laggards. Skully Simms’ tears 
dried on his swollen face. He got up, half 
shame-facedly and fell into the march, and so 
marching forgot his shame and his resentment. 
And Bud Coulter, springing at last to his feet, 
tramped with the others. He was, after all, a 
“ good sport.” He had spoken out his feelings, 
and now, head up — just a touch defiantly — he 
fell in line. They all went out of the school' 
house so, and on to where the various paths 
diverged, running this way and that over the 
mountainside, to end in the little cabins where 
the children lived. 

Haystack sped them on their way. Then he 
dropped his instrument and turned to Azalea 
who stood beside him. 

“ Well, honey-bird,” he said with fatherly 
tenderness, “ how does the world treat you? ” 


CHAPTER IX 

THE RESCUE 

“ There ain’t many men as inquisitive as I 
be,” remarked Haystack Thompson as he sat at 
Aunt Zillah’s supper table that evening. 
“ ’Tain’t the kind of inquisitiveness that takes 
men to big towns, nor the kind that takes men 
to sea. It’s jest the kind that has to know what’s 
going on in the neighborhood.” 

“ But you must admit,” said Carin teasingly, 
“ that your neighborhood is rather a large one.” 

“ So it is, so it is,” confessed Mr. Thompson. 
“ It includes these yere mountains in all their 
outcroppings in the two Carolinas. I make it 
my business to know what’s going on in them 
whenever possible. Earthquakes, funerals, 
singings, weddings, corn huskings — anything 
out of the usual — demand my attention.” 

“ Well, I’m glad we received it, at any rate,” 
said Azalea. “ Did you think we were getting 
into mischief? The truth is, all had been per- 
fectly quiet till you arrived on the scene.” 

156 


THE RESCUE 


157 


“ But it was a dishonorable peace,” roared 
Mr. Thompson. “ The enemy had you. You 
were in league with the powers of darkness. 
Now, freedom and honor sit upon your banners.” 

“ So they do,” said Miss Zillah. “ I declare, 
whenever I thought of that poor little boy who 
honed to come to school and wasn’t allowed, it 
seemed to me I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to 
go out and do something about it, but I didn’t 
know how.” 

“ I picked him up down the road a piece,” 
explained Mr. Thompson. “ He was playing 
with a little snake — both of 'em having a nice 
pleasant time — and I up and said : ‘ Why are 
you playing with snakes instead of studying up 
at Ravenel School with the young misses? ’ And 
what do you think the little cuss said? 4 It ain’t 
as dangerous,’ said he. ‘Not as dangerous?’ 
said I. ‘ How is that? ’ So he up and told me 
the whole story.” 

“ There’s a story whichever way you turn 
here,” said Azalea. “Just listen, Mr. Thomp- 
son, while I tell you the story of Paralee 
Panther.” 

So she told the tale of Paralee, of how her 
name was no name, of her father, paralyzed, in 


158 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


need of every comfort, and far from all 
physicians’ aid and all neighborly service. Mr. 
Thompson listened with deep interest. 

“ Troubles,” he said, “ is divided into two 
kinds. There’s the kind you can’t help and that 
you’d best forget; and there’s the kind you can 
help and that you want to get after. It looks 
to me as if this is something to get after.” 

“ We all think so,” said Azalea. “ And we 
propose going to-morrow to see. There’s a nice 
boy up here named Keefe O’Connor, an artist — 
he helps us in our school, too, almost every 
day — and he’s going with us.” 

“ You-all don’t have no call to go,” said Mr. 
Thompson. “Not now, at any rate. Here I 
be, a lazy old coot, with nothing else to do. Just 
let me go and investigate these here Panthers.” 

But Azalea shook a finger at him. 

“ Mr. Thompson, Mr. Thompson,” she said. 
“ Do you think we’re the kind that can come 
up into the mountains and just sit and look off 
at the view? You know we aren’t. We mean 
to go to that poor man. That’s our adventure, 
don’t you see? Rescuing the helpless is the 
greatest fun there is. Why, the knights of old 
found that out. After you’ve tried all sorts of 


THE RESCUE 


159 


things, being rich and gay and all that, you come 
back to that old idea. So we’re setting out to 
rescue somebody, and we simply can’t be inter- 
fered with. But you may come along if you 
like. It will make it twice as interesting.” 

“ About this ‘ nice boy,’ ” said Elaystack, ever 
the watchful protector of Azalea. “ Who is 
he? Where does he come from? Who are his 
folks? What kind of a job does he look to 
have — or is he a shiftless good-for-nothing like 
me? ” 

Carin, who felt the inquiries to be justified, 
flushed slightly and Azalea distinctly frowned. 
It was Azalea who spoke. 

“ We don’t know a thing about him, and that’s 
a fact,” she confessed. “ We thought that per- 
haps some day he’d be telling us about himself, 
but he never says a word. I think there’s some- 
thing he doesn’t want to tell.” 

“ Like as not,” said Haystack, dryly. 

“ Oh, not anything that he’s ashamed of,” put 
in Azalea quickly, “ but something that it would 
make him sad to tell. You know, Mr. Thomp- 
son, dear, that it’s just that way with me. There 
are things in my life I don’t want to speak of, 
ever, but nothing that I’m ashamed of. If it’s 


160 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


that way with me, why shouldn’t it be the same 
with others?” 

“Why not, indeed, honey-bird?” said Mr. 
Thompson contritely. “ Well, we’ll see this 
‘ nice boy,’ and pass judgment on him. Though, 
honor bright, Zalie, I think your judgment 
ain’t the worst in the state. For a young-un 
you’ve had a good deal of experience in life and 
I reckon you have your own way of sizing up 
folks.” 

As a result of all this, the next morning, early, 
in the best of moods and with a spirit for kindly 
adventure burning within them, a party of five 
started for Soco Mountain. 

The “ sun ball,” as the mountain folk call it, 
was just showing a burning rim above the pur- 
ple horizon when they set out, with food in their 
saddle bags', matches in their pockets and can- 
teens of pure spring water on their backs. Food 
for the horses and raincoats were buckled to the 
saddles. 

“ Short of breaking a nag’s leg,” said Hay- 
stack Thompson, complacently, “ we’re safe.” 

The first business of the day was to go for 
Paralee, who was of course to be their guide. 
Living as she did a mile or two back of Rowan- 


THE RESCUE 


161 


tree Hall, Azalea begged that they might pass 
through the Rowantree estate, giving her a 
chance to speak a word with Mary Cecily, whose 
haunting story stayed with her almost con- 
stantly — all the more, perhaps, because she had 
been forbidden to speak of it to anyone. The 
detour made for the purpose was not great, and 
presently they were pounding up the “ ap- 
proach ” which Mr. Rowantree so prized. But 
on this occasion the master of the house was not 
sitting upon his gallery. Instead, they found him 
in the “ drawing-room,” clad in a snuff-covered 
silk dressing gown, reading from an old red' 
bound copy of “ The Lady of the Lake ” to the 
twins, Moira and Michael, while little Mrs. 
Rowantree got the breakfast. 

“ The vocation I should have chosen,” he said 
to his guests after they were seated, “ is teaching 
the young mind to expand. It is, I may say, one 
of the few things which really interest me.” 

“ Yes, indeed,” said Mrs. Rowantree, bustling 
about to serve her guests with hot coffee, “ I 
can’t tell you what a help it is to me, having Mr. 
Rowantree amuse the children the way he does.” 

“ Wouldn’t 1 instruct ’ be a better word than 
‘ amuse,’ my dear? ” asked her husband. 


162 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ Oh, indeed, you do instruct as well as amuse 
them,” she cried loyally. “ You instruct us all” 

“ He didn’t amuse nor instruct me none,” said 
Haystack Thompson when they were on their 
way again. “ A great hulk of a man a-setting 
around while his little wife lugs in the 
firewood ! ” 

“ It would be horrible, the way she works and 
the way he loafs,” said Keefe, “ if it weren’t 
that she is happy. She likes to be doing things 
for him and the children.” 

“ He sure is a loafer,” mused Haystack. “ I 
know, because I’m a loafer myself and I can 
recognize one when I see him. But he puts on 
airs with his loafing, and I swan, I don’t like 
that. But say, he’s got cute children, ain’t he? 
That there little Constance said if I’d stay she’d 
call me ‘ uncle.’ ” He laughed in a flattered way 
at the remembrance of it. 

They were soon at the little cabin where 
Paralee lived with her grandmother and her 
brother. The brother they learned, was already 
off at the sawmill, but the grandmother, bent 
double with age, with two sharp teeth protrud- 
ing from otherwise toothless jaws, and with her 
face brown and furrowed, came out to see her 


THE RESCUE 


163 


granddaughter’s guests. Her gimlet eyes 
seemed to bore through them. She looked as if 
she knew many things which she would not tell, 
and which, indeed, she ought not to tell. Carin 
had brought her sketch book, and was eager to 
make a drawing of old granny Panther, but she 
was given no time, for Paralee was awaiting 
them, ready and impatient to lead them on. She 
had no horse, but she said she wanted none. 

“ I can keep up with your horses,” she told 
Azalea. 

Keefe wanted to lend her his mount, but at 
his offer she frowned with vexation. 

“ I don’t want to be plagued,” she said sul- 
lenly, and set off down the road. Her strong, 
short body moved over the ground with aston- 
ishing swiftness; and as she took advantage of 
every cut-off, leaving the riders to go around 
by the road, she soon proved that they would 
not be obliged to waste time by waiting for her. 
The Gap was quickly crossed and she turned up 
a shoulder of Dundee Mountain, where for an 
hour the blowing horses had a hard climb. 
Then came a canter along the almost level table- 
top of the mountain, till, having reached the end 
of the plateau, the road began to descend. The 


164 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


great mountain reached out many arms, each of 
which bore a name ; and it was along one of these 
wooded reaches that Paralee led them. By 
noon, a narrow valley was reached; and here, 
beside a pleasant stream, the green solitude all 
about them, they dismounted for their luncheon 
and to rest themselves and their horses. 

Paralee would not eat with them, though she 
accepted the luncheon Azalea offered her. She 
walked away to a shady spot, turned her back 
upon her companions and munched her food 
alone. 

“ Why does she do it? ” Carin asked. It was 
Haystack who knew the answer. 

“ She does it because she’s as proud as 
Lucifer,” he said sympathetically. 

“ She does it,” echoed Azalea, “ because she’s 
afraid her manners won’t be like ours.” 

“She does it because she is unhappy,” said 
Keefe. “ I have been unhappy, and I know.” 

It was the first time he had made a reference 
to his past life. 

But now there was another mountain to climb. 
It was low, long, and dull-looking, and so heavily 
wooded that there was little outlook. Azalea 


THE RESCUE 


165 


said she believed that it was the only mountain 
she ever had seen which she did not care for. 
The road was so bad that it was impossible for 
a wagon to pass over it; and even the horses had 
trouble making their way. Only Paralee, 
grown up in that tangle, knew how to thread it 
with ease. It was one of the few things which 
she did know well, and as she went on, showing 
no sign of weariness, her awkwardness and shy- 
ness began to drop from her. She was on her 
own ground — the ground where she and her 
people had fought their lonely fight for life; 
and she was carrying help to those whose sor- 
rows had been a savage grief to her. 

Presently they reached a ragged clearing, 
stumbled past it to an ill-kept garden, passed a 
number of pig pens and a large chicken yard, 
and came upon the place that Paralee Panther 
called home. It had been rather a pleasant 
cabin, once, perhaps, in the old days when 
Thomas Panther had brought his bride there 
and had “ aimed ” to be a farmer and woodsman. 
But the roof now hardly gave shelter from the 
storms, the shutters sagged from the unglassed 
windows, the steps had rotted away, and one 


166 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


mounted to the floor by means of ill-chosen stones 
which had been placed before the door, and 
which rocked when they were stepped upon. 

Paralee plunged ahead to carry word to that 
desolated house that visitors were at hand. 

Visitors! 

The word means little enough to most people, 
thought Azalea, but to these strange, stricken 
people, these people who, as Paralee said, had 
“ almost forgot how to talk,” it must be as the 
sight of a sail to one upon a desert island. Per- 
haps they would fear as much as they would 
welcome it; yet there was Paralee, dragging a 
gaunt worpan to the door. 

“ Tell ’em to ’light, ma, and come in,” begged 
the girl, using the mountaineers’ old phrase of 
hospitality. 

“ We will, ma’am,” cried Haystack Thomp- 
son, just as if Mrs. Panther herself has spoken. 
“ We’ll be glad to.” 

He left Keefe to help the ladies from their 
mounts, and himself went forward to shake this 
ghostlike woman by the hand. She was tall and 
sunburned, thin past belief, and so smitten by 
the silence and deadness of the days that she 


There was Paralee, dragging a gaunt woman to the door. 
“ Tell ’em to ’light, ma, and come in,” she begged. 































* 






































































THE RESCUE 


167 


looked like a person who had lost some of her 
faculties. Yet now, with a visible effort, she 
summoned back her knowledge of what should 
be done when guests came. 

The first glance in the cabin was enough. Its 
two beds, its rickety chairs and uncovered table, 
were the whole of the tale so far as furniture 
went, and a pathetic tale it was. But the tragedy 
began with the man who lay in one of the beds. 
His wandering, wild glance fell upon the visitors 
with something like terror. His yellow skin 
clung to his bones, and only one side of his body 
was alive. The other was immovable in the 
curious half-death of paralysis. 

It was Keefe who first went to him, for Mr. 
Thompson had paused a moment, aghast at the 
sight. 

“ You must pardon us for coming to your 
home, sir,” he said in such a gentle and winning 
way that no one could have resisted his plea. 
“ It is taking a liberty, we know, but we heard 
how ill you were and how no doctor could get 
to you. We are not doctors, but we mean to 
get you to one if it will do any good.” 

Panther, it appeared, could talk but little. He 
shook his head despairingly at Keefe’s speech, 


168 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


and made a strange, inarticulate sound in his 
throat. 

“ Nothing won’t help him,” said his wife. 

A tree fell on him and he’s got the paraletics. 
He ain’t going to git well.” She made the state- 
ment calmly. She was used to the idea; it was 
her house-companion and always with her. 

“ Where’s Pete?” asked Paralee. “Ain’t he 
’round? ” 

“ He’s done lit out,” said Mrs. Panther, still 
in that dead voice. 

“ Lit out? ” cried Paralee. “ You don’t mean 
he’s gone and run away? ” 

Mrs. Panthef nodded again; and again the 
eyes of her husband rolled wildly. 

“ Did he leave you all alone, ma? ” persisted 
Paralee. “ ’Th’out anybody to do for you? ” 

“ My childer has all done that,” said the 
woman. “ Thar ain’t nary one left.” 

“ Oh, but Paralee didn’t mean to desert you, 
ma’am,” cried Azalea, unable to endure the 
spiritual bleakness of that home another minute. 
“ It was only that she might find some way to 
help you that she left. She’s going to be a 
teacher; she — ” 


THE RESCUE 169 

Mrs. Panther lifted her sun-faded eyes and 
looked at Azalea with unspeakable scorn. 

a Her! A teacher! ” she said. 

Azalea saw Paralee cower at this speech, and 
she knew then why the girl was so sullen, so 
heavily sad. She had been “ put down ” all her 
life, and she had grown to be like a hateful, 
chained beast under it. 

Then Miss Zillah spoke. She was occupying 
one of the three chairs in the room, and in that 
bare and bitter place, she looked — with her 
kind face and seemly garments — like a being 
from another world than that in which poor 
Mrs. Panther lived and had her aimless being. 

“ She has the wish to be a teacher, Mrs. 
Panther,” she said in her soft tones, “ and she 
has the brains for it as well, so these young ladies 
tell me. In fact, I hear that she understands 
book-studying better than most. We all hope 
to help her, ma’am, and to see you and your 
husband in a different home from this. Wouldn’t 
you like to have neighbors and to be where a 
doctor could visit your husband? ” 

But Mrs. Panther could not face Miss Pace 
as she replied. There was too much she could 
not tell. How could she leave the only spot 


170 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


on earth that belonged to her? How could they 
make any sort of a living elsewhere? Dare she, 
who had no more clothes than the poorest 
beggar, go out into the world? 

Miss Zillah looked at her with her soft yet 
penetrating gaze. 

“ I know all you’re thinking, Mrs. Panther,” 
she said in tones that carried conviction to the 
heart, “ but I’ll just ask you to trust in us and 
we’ll see you through.” 

For a moment or two no one spoke. Mr. 
Thompson was leaving matters for the present 
in Miss Zillah’s hands. Keefe and the girls 
were silent with pity. Never had they imagined 
anything so hopeless as the look on the faces 
of that man and woman. 

“ You’ll think of a dozen reasons why you 
can’t do this or that,” went on Miss Zillah, “ but 
I feel that every one of them can be overcome.” 

Paralee had drawn nearer to her mother, and 
her dark eyes shone like points of fire there in 
the gloom of the cabin. 

“Say yes, ma,” she whispered. “Say yes! 
We’ll all die here like snakes in our holes, if you 
don’t.” 

Mrs. Panther turned on her. 


THE RESCUE 


171 


“ What you talking to me for? ” she 
demanded. “ Didn’t you turn your back on me? 
Didn’t you make Jake leave? Didn’t you take 
Granny? Much you care!” 

Then Haystack Thompson arose. He towered 
till he almost touched the roof of the cabin. 

“Mrs. Panther, ma’am,” he said, “you ain’t 
seeing things right, but I don’t blame you none. 
I’m a mountain man and I know how you feel. 
You’re proud. But this ain’t a question of pride. 
This is a question of saving lives. Now, ma’am, 
does it hurt your husband to move him?” 

“ Oh, awful,” she said. “ One side don’t feel, 
but to touch him hurts the other side awful.” 

“Does it, now?” said the fiddler, his voice 
quivering with sympathy. “ I wonder why? 
Ladies, if you’ll be so good as to step outside, 
I’ll see if I can find out. I’m something of a 
bone-setter in my way. O’Connor, will you lend 
a hand? ” 

Half an hour later Mr. Thompson came to 
consult with the ladies. 

“ I believe,” he said earnestly, “ that the man 
can be cured. There’s a broken collar bone — 
broken in two places as I make out, and never 
set — and it’s pressing on nerves and muscles in 


172 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


such a way as to make him helpless. That’s the 
way it looks to me. Now, Miss Carin told me 
coming over, that she’d pay for his keep in a 
hospital at Asheville if only we could get him 
there. It would be the death of him to take him 
in a wagon; and he couldn’t sit on a nag. So 
O’Connor and I have fixed it up that we’ll carry 
him out.” 

“ But you can’t do that, Mr. Thompson,” 
objected Miss Zillah. “ You’re not so vigorous 
as you used to be, sir — ” 

“ Never tell me that, Miss Pace! Never tell 
me that! Old Haystack’s got muscle and he’s 
got grit. You’ll see. You’ve set me on doing 
it more than ever, Miss Pace.” 

“ It might be all very well to carry him for 
a mile,” said the practical Azalea, “ but just 
think of doing it for miles and miles — for 
twenty miles.” 

“ We won’t have to carry him that far. Say 
we rig up a hammock and carry him ten miles. 
Then we’ll reach a wagon road. Meantime, 
you-all ride ahead, and have a wagon waiting 
for us. Put a mattress on it with plenty of 
pillows and comfortables.” 

“ And we’ll bring along something to sustain 


THE RESCUE 


173 


him,” added Aunt Zillah, forgetting all about 
her objections, “ and some refreshments for you 
and Keefe — ” 

“ And the first thing you know we’ll have him 
at Bee Tree.” 

“ Then,” put in Carin, “ we could get the 
drawing room on a Pullman for him, and you 
and Keefe could go with him to Asheville.” 

“ Sure,” said Mr. Thompson. “ Sure we can 
do it!” 

u And is Mrs. Panther willing? ” asked Miss 
Zillah. 

“ You can’t tell whether she is or whether she 
ain’t,” said Mr. Thompson. “ She’s fierce as a 
tiger. But then she’s lived like a tiger — only 
the hunting ain’t been good. Say, ladies, are 
you with us?” 

“ Oh, we are,” said Miss Zillah fervently. “ It 
will be like taking a man from a living tomb. 
Of course I can see there are many difficulties, 
but probably it is best not to think too much 
about them.” 

“ That’s the idee exackly,” agreed Mr. 
Thompson. “ If you want to do anything, don’t 
waste your time thinking about the difficulties.” 


174 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ For example,” went on Miss Zillah, “ you’ll 
never reach the main road before sundown.” 

“ We’ve thought of that,” said Mr. Thomp- 
son, “ and what we propose is that we shall stay 
right here to-night.” 

“ Oh, I couldn’t sleep in that house,” whis- 
pered Carin. “ Honestly, I couldn’t.” 

“No call to,” said Mr. Thompson, flushing 
a little, however, in spite of himself, out of loy- 
alty to his fellow mountain folk. “ You-all will 
sleep out in the open. You can have the stars 
for your candles and the sun-ball for your alarm 
clock. O’Connor and I will scrape up pine 
leaves for your beds. You can put your rain- 
coats around you, and maybe I can find an extra 
blanket to help you out. We’ll build a fire and 
you can sleep with your feet to it. Now, what’s 
the matter with that? ” 

“ Nothing, nothing,” cried Azalea. “ Oh, 
Mr. Thompson, how sweet of you to think of 
it.” 

Haystack Thompson grinned mockingly at 
his young friend. 

“Me, 1 sweet’?” he asked derisively. “Jest 
about as sweet as a green persimmon.” 


CHAPTER X 

THE RESCUE, CONTINUED 

Breaking up a home is not an easy matter, 
even when the home has little in it; nor is it a 
happy thing — no, not even when the home has 
been a sad one. Moreover, it can not be done 
in an hour, even under the easiest conditions. 

“ We’ll come back some day, I reckon,” said 
Mrs. Panther to Miss Pace, looking about her 
at the bare room with its broken fireplace and 
dingy walls. “ Seems like I wouldn’t know how 
to live nowhere else.” 

“ If Mr. Panther gets well, maybe you’ll be 
glad to come back,” faltered Aunt Zillah, trying 
to say the kind thing, but thinking in her wise 
heart that these people were perishing, soul and 
body, for lack of mixing with their kind. But 
there was really too much to do to spend time 
sighing over the breaking up. Even the one 
remaining hog and the thirty odd chickens had 
to be planned for. It was decided finally that 
Paralee was to drive the hog, and that such of 
175 


176 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


the chickens as were not eaten that night for 
supper, were to be put in panniers fastened to 
the saddles and carried to the McEvoys for safe 
keeping. 

Miss Zillah wanted to help Mrs. Panther pack 
her clothes, but she was not quite sure that there 
was anything to pack; and indeed there was no 
more than could be put in a couple of old melon- 
shaped baskets. 

“ Clothes ain’t come into my reckoning,” said 
Mrs. Panther quaintly, growing more sociable 
as she felt the influence of Miss Zillah’s genial 
atmosphere. “ And, anyway, there wa’n’t nobody 
to see what we had on.” 

Meantime, Mr. Thompson and Keefe had, 
with the aid of Paralee, been giving their atten- 
tion to the hammock in which the sick man was 
to be carried. The house contained one good 
blanket of wool homespun, strong yet flexible. 
This, doubled, was stretched upon poles, and 
since no stout rope could be found about the 
place, heavy braided warp was fastened to these 
poles. This improvised rope was to be slung 
over the shoulders of the carriers. Azalea and 
Carin braided the rope and found it a pleasant 
task. Indeed, they both were very happy. 


THE RESCUE, CONTINUED 177 


“ It warms me all up,” said Azalea, “ to think 
of getting this poor man out of here and giving 
him a chance, and I’m just as glad for his wife 
as I am for him. Talk of paralysis; Mrs. Pan- 
ther has paralysis of the soul, don’t you think? ” 

“Isn’t Paralee changed?” Carin cried, not 
bothering to answer Azalea’s question. “ She’s 
actually tidying up things. I saw her straight- 
ening out the mess under the house with her one 
poor hand. She wants the Panther house to 
fall to ruins decently. That’s going a good way 
— for Paralee.” 

“ Oh, you never can tell a thing about these 
mountain people,” said Azalea. “Very likely, 
a few generations back these silly Panthers, who 
ought to have called themselves Marr, had no 
end of self-respect. Many, many generations 
back, they may have been fine people. Marr 
certainly is the name of one of the greatest of 
families.” 

“ Perhaps it meant the same as Panther in 
the beginning,” surmised Carin. “ Mars is the 
god of war, and maybe the Marrs and the 
Panthers all got their names because they were 
such good fighters.” 

The sick man had been caried out of doors 


178 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


by Mr. Thompson and Keefe, and placed where 
he could watch the preparations that were being 
made for his journey. And while he looked, 
not more than half-understanding, his great wild 
eyes rolling in their sockets, his wife mixed hoe- 
cake, using the last meal she possessed, and 
cooked it on the coals. Chickens had been pre- 
pared with dispatch, and were boiling in the 
pot, and Aunt Zillah, having given all necessary 
attention to affairs within the house, was now 
gathering dewberries and getting a fine bowl of 
them. 

Presently the hammock was completed and 
supper was served. Miss Zillah had persuaded 
Mrs. Panther to let them eat it in the open, and 
they sat together, that strangely mingled com- 
pany, in the clear light of the long-lingering day, 
enjoying their homely repast. The lovely even- 
ing, the wild spot, her friends — so various, but 
so dear — the awakening light in Paralee’s eyes, 
the sense of being, somehow, on the right road 
of the world, brought to Azalea’s heart a sense 
of dancing delight. She insisted on serving the 
chicken, the hoecake and the hot decoction 
which Mrs. Panther was pleased to call tea, 
making the others sit still while she waited on 


THE RESCUE, CONTINUED 179 


them. She could only be contented when she 
was doing something, it seemed. 

It was well on into the evening before the 
company was ready for rest; for the last prepa- 
rations for moving had to be made that night 
if the company was to have an early morning 
start The horses had to be cared for, Mr. Pan- 
ther made as fit for civilization as possible, some 
sprt of garments contrived for Mrs. Panther, 
and the house and yard “ put straight.” Every- 
one, save, of course, the helpless, silent man upon 
his couch, turned in to help, Carin with the rest. 
Once Azalea whispered to her friend: 

“ Did you hear that noise? It’s Paralee 
laughing! ” 

“ Do you thing so? ” asked Carin skeptically. 
“ It sounded to me rather like a frog.” 

“ It was Paralee,” declared Azalea seriously. 
“ It did sound a little like a frog, didn’t it, but 
just you wait a month or two, Carin Carson, and 
then hear how it sounds ! ” 

Carin gave a tired little laugh. 

“ I can’t take another step, Zalie,” she 
declared. “ No matter what the rest of you do, 
I’ve got to go to bed.” 

Going to bed on this night meant rolling one’s 


180 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


self in a raincoat, covering one’s self with some 
coarse handmade sheeting, and lying straight 
upon a bed of pine needles with one’s face to the 
stars. 

“ You don’t seem nearly so tired and sleepy 
as I am, Zalie dear. Sit by me and hold my 
hand,” pleaded Carin. “ You’ll lie next me, 
won’t you — quite close? The mountain seems 
huge, doesn’t it? Like a kind beast. Isn’t it 
breathing? I feel as if it were breathing. Deep 
breaths. Where do you suppose my own, own 
father and mother are to-night? It was queer 
that I didn’t want to go with them, wasn’t it? 
I wonder if it was because I didn’t wish to leave 
you, 1 honey-bird ’ — as Mr. Thompson calls 
you. Why didn’t he bring his fiddle? He 
doesn’t look right to me without his fiddle. 
Oh — h, how tired I am. Sing, Azalea: ‘ Now 
the day is over.’ ” 

Carin hummed the first line; Azalea took it 
up at the second, and the soft silence of the 
night was broken by the harmony of their voices. 
Azalea remembered the evening, long ago, when 
she had heard Carin and her father and mother 
singing that far down the trail. That was the 
night they had come to ask her to be Carin’s 


THE RESCUE, CONTINUED 181 

adopted sister — the night she had weighed her 
love for Ma McBirney in the balance with 
riches and opportunity, and had decided in favor 
of the mountain cabin and Ma McBirney’s love. 

Carin slept quickly, but she was over-tired; 
her slender shoulders twitched spasmodically, 
and the hand Azalea held would clutch and then 
as suddenly relax. 

“ Oh, me,” thought Azalea, suddenly anxious, 
“ are we forgetting how delicate and tender she 
is? What if she should be ill, with her mother 
so far away! We aren’t looking after her the 
way we ought. She can’t stand the things the 
rest of us can. I must have a talk with Aunt 
Zillah at once.” 

She drew her hand softly from Carin’s grasp 
and looked about her for Aunt Zillah. Some- 
one paced slowly up and down beneath the 
trees at no great distance, and Azalea ran to see 
who it was. 

“ It’s only Keefe,” said a voice in answer to 
her low inquiry. “ Not the person you’re look- 
ing for, I’m sure.” 

“ I happened to be looking for Aunt Zillah,” 
said Azalea; “ but why shouldn’t I be looking 
for you, Keefe O’Connor?” 


182 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ Because you never do — you never have — 
never will. Nobody looks for me. Nobody 
worries about me. I come and go as I please — 
and don’t like it. I had some hope at the begin- 
ning of the season that Mrs. Rowantree would 
worry about me — she seemed so nice. But she 
hasn’t a speck of worry to spare from Himself 
and the children. Then I thought maybe Miss 
Pace would devote at least ten minutes a day 
to worrying about me, but she hasn’t shown a 
sign of it. She never asks me where I come 
from or who I am, or why I am, or — ” 

“ Why, Keefe O’Connor, you’re as unjust as 
you can be. She hasn’t asked you — none of us 
has asked you — because we thought that for 
some reason you didn’t want to tell.” 

Keefe stopped short in his pacing, and stand- 
ing twenty feet from the girl, let one cold word 
drop between them. 

“ Oh!” 

“ What a horrid way of saying ‘ Oh! ’ ” cried 
Azalea. “ I meant just what I said and not any- 
thing more. You know very well that we’ve 
liked you from the first, Keefe, and that it never 
would occur to us to think anything about you 
that — that wasn’t nice. What’s the matter with 


THE RESCUE, CONTINUED 183 


you to-night, anyway? I feel as if, whatever I 
said, you’d put some meaning into it that I 
didn’t want put there.” 

“What’s the matter with me?” he asked. 
“ Why, I’m homesick — for a home I never 
had. I want to see the kin I haven’t got. I 
want to know my own name. I want to under- 
stand — ” he broke off and let the words rest 
quivering upon the air. Azalea drew a little 
nearer in the gloom. 

“ Don’t you know any of those things, Keefe? ” 
Her voice sounded awed. 

“No, Azalea, I don’t. I have, I believe, the 
strangest story in the world. I’ve wanted and 
wanted to tell it to you, but I’ve been afraid 
that you — well, that you wouldn’t believe it, 
or perhaps that you wouldn’t like me so well 
after you knew it.” 

“Oh, Keefe, tell me now! I should love to 
hear a strange story to-night. I love to live 
under the sky, don’t you? When I was a little 
girl I often slept out like this with my poor 
mamma. Oh, Keefe, how I wish you had known 
my poor little mother ! Where shall we sit while 
you tell me the story? Or would you rather we 
walked back and forth?” 


184 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


But before Keefe could reply, Miss Zillah, 
with Paralee and her mother, came from the 
house and joined them. 

“ Paralee wishes to sleep out here with us, 
Azalea,” said Miss Pace. “ That will be very 
nice, won’t it? Mrs. Panther has come to say 
good night, my dear. I tell her she must get to 
bed. To-morrow will be a trying day, though, 
I hope, a happy one, too.” 

Keefe and Azalea stood silent for a moment. 
Their little moment of enchantment was shat- 
tered and it was hard for them to hide their 
disappointment. Then Azalea tried to say what 
was expected of her, but Mrs. Panther broke in : 

“ IVe got it on my mind,” she said slowly, 
“ to say how I feel about you-all coming away 
out here to help me and my man. It’s hard 
for me to say, for I ain’t used to strangers. 
What’s more, it’s a good while since I had call 
to thank anyone. Things has been against me 
and folks has been against me. My own chil- 
dren has been against me.” 

“ No, they hain’t, ma. No, they hain’t,” cried 
Paralee excitedly. “You’ll see it hain’t so — ” 

“ What I can’t get clear in my mind,” went 
on the woman, paying no heed to Paralee’s wist- 


THE RESCUE, CONTINUED 185 

ful tug at her sleeve, “ is why you-all should 
trouble yourselves to come up here on something 
that ain’t no concern of yourn — ” 

“ You would have done just the same, 
wouldn’t you, Mrs. Panther,” said Azalea in her 
light, almost gay little way, “ if you had heard 
we were in trouble and had known you could 
help us out?” 

“ Who, me?” gasped Mrs. Panther. “I 
never helped nobody. Never had the chanct.” 
Again the bitterness came into her voice. 

“ I’m going to give you the chance sometime, 
Mrs. Panther,” said Azalea, laughing softly. 
“ Then you’ll help me the very best you know 
how; won’t she, Aunt Zillah? ” 

On that they parted. Keefe and Mr. Thomp- 
son slept at some distance, guarding the path — 
though indeed there was no one to guard it 
against. Aunt Zillah and her girls lay beneath 
a hemlock tree. Beside them, Paralee watched 
the slow roll of the stars till far into the night, 
unable to sleep for the thoughts that beset her. 

“ I couldn’t stay in the house,” she whispered 
to Azalea. “ It made me think of the dark 
days.” 

“ The dark days? ” 


186 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ Before I went away — when I thought we 
was forgot by all on the world.” 

The night was good to them ; the wind 
was low and kind; the dew softer than fairy 
fingers; the stars softly bright. Even the dawn 
did not come blazing upon them. In pink and 
gray, delicately it smiled from the farther hills. 
True, all night long the whippoorwill teased 
the air with his foolish song, but all there were 
too used to the notes of his voice to heed. 

An hour after sunup, the procession was on 
its way. Mrs. Panther and Paralee rode the 
horses which had carried Keefe and Haystack 
Thompson the day before. In the panniers by 
their side cackled the excited and displeased 
chickens, and following them came the equally 
surprised and disgusted pig, for whom Keefe 
had constructed a harness by means of which 
Paralee led him. Last of all came Keefe and 
Haystack, carrying the paralyzed man in his 
hammock. 

The little house looked wretchedly deserted 
when Paralee had closed its shutters and Keefe 
nailed up its door. He noticed that Mrs. Pan- 
ther kept her head turned away from it and he 
wondered if she had, after all, some strange, 


THE RESCUE, CONTINUED 187 

irrational love for this grim place, where she 
had suffered so much, and known such bitter 
solitude. 

Well, he reflected, the wrench would soon be 
over. Ten minutes took them out of sight of 
the house. They presently were out of the 
clearing and picking their way along the most 
terrible road in a country of bad roads. The 
drag of the sick man’s weight, half-skeleton 
though he was, was more of a burden than 
Keefe thought it would be. At the end of the 
first mile it seemed to him that he could not go 
on ; but oddly enough, the second mile found him 
getting accustomed to the task. With Haystack 
Thompson, however, the carrying of this dead 
weight seemed to be but a small hardship. 
Though making the best baskets in the country 
and playing the violin with the touch of wild 
genius were not occupations to strengthen 
muscles, still Thompson was capable of great 
exertion. Keefe, who walked behind him, 
looked at his great shoulders with envy. 

Miss Pace, with Azalea and Carin, had ridden 
on ahead as fast as they could push their horses, 
in order to send the McEvoy wagon to the point 
where the rough trail met the wagon road. They 


188 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


had no fear of losing their way, for the marks 
their horses had made the previous day were 
their sure guide. So if they were anxious, it 
was not for themselves. Their fear was for the 
two burden-bearers. Azalea had seen from the 
first that Keefe was finding the task a very diffi- 
cult one. He was not strong in the way her good 
Haystack was, and he never would be. She 
thought of his delicate, long, “ clever ” hands, 
that could handle the sketching pencil or the 
painter’s brush so deftly, of all his quick, kind, 
charming ways, and wondered again what the 
story could be that he wanted to tell her, and 
how it was that he seemed so alone in the world. 

The day was proving itself a surprisingly hot 
one for that altitude. Azalea was glad to 
remember the canteens of cold water that the 
men carried with them, and hoped Haystack 
would tell Keefe to put green leaves in his hat 
to keep his head cool. She wondered if there 
was danger of sunstroke away up on the moun- 
tains and wanted to ask Miss Pace, but for some 
reason didn’t quite like to. Too much anxiety 
about Keefe might bring out Carin’s little teas- 
ing smile. Anyway, it was no time for asking 
questions. She urged Paprika ahead of the 


THE RESCUE, CONTINUED 189 

others, and rode him over the stubble, through 
the bushes, across the fords, until at last she 
reached the well-traveled road. Here she 
watered him lightly, and breathed him for a few 
minutes. Then she flicked the reins on his neck. 

“ Go home, pony,” she called sharply. 
Paprika gave a little sniff as much as to say that 
he had supposed that was what he was doing, 
and reaching out with his tough little legs, he 
fairly flew over the ground. Carin set her pretty 
Mustard at the same pace. The ponies had been 
bred together and were equally matched, yet 
to-day Mustard did not seem quite the equal of 
Paprika, and Mustard’s mistress wondered why. 
But Aunt Zillah knew. The difference lay, not 
in the ponies, but in the riders. It was Azalea 
whose aching sympathy with those she had left 
behind her, diffused itself through the heart and 
lungs and legs of her staunch little mount, giving 
him a speed he seldom had known before. 

Indeed, it was an all but fainting pony that 
was drawn up at last by the McEvoy steps. 
Azalea had slipped from her saddle as the little; 
creature swayed, and guessing at his trouble, had 
snatched up a pail of water which stood upon 
the house steps and dashed it over his face. 


190 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


Miles McEvoy, placidly smoking his pipe in 
the shade of a sweet gum tree, came to her aid, 
but she waved him away. 

“ Hitch the horses to the wagon,” she said, 
“ and please ask Mrs. McEvoy to come here.” 

McEvoy, the leisurely, stared for one second. 
Then, putting a question or two, and receiving 
Azalea’s clear answers, he strode away to do 
her bidding. Azalea got the saddle off her 
weary little mount and ran to get the necessaries 
for the relief wagon, explaining as she worked. 
A few moments later, Miss Zillah and Carin 
arrived, Carin too jaded to be of much service 
just then, but Aunt Zillah full of expedients. 

So in less than an hour, McEvoy, with his 
wife beside him, was on his way, and the three 
who were left behind were making free in the 
bedroom of the many bottles, getting all in readi- 
ness for Mr. Panther. 

At midnight they laid the sick man on Mrs. 
McEvoy’s best feather bed. Very deep and 
soft and sweet it was, and very kindly and safe 
looked the homely room. Miss Zillah’s soup was 
hot and savory, and her tea had comfort in it 
for the weary. Azalea and Carin, swift-footed 
and eager, rendered all the service in their 


THE RESCUE, CONTINUED 191 

power, and at length, when every task was per- 
formed, with their lanterns in their hands, they, 
with Miss Zillah, started for their home. 

Keefe O’Connor was sitting without the door 
waiting for them. 

“ I want to see you safe, please,” he said in 
rather a curious voice. Azalea looked at him 
to see what was the matter, but the lantern 
revealed nothing more than a white and 
strained face. She noticed that he was unusually 
silent as they made their way over the path of 
pine needles to the Oriole’s Nest, but for the 
matter of that, none of them felt talkative. She 
certainly was not prepared to see him, when he 
had unlocked the cabin door for them, reel sud- 
denly and fall unconscious across the threshold. 


CHAPTER XI 


KEEFE. 

Miss Zillah laid a hand on Azalea’s arm. 

“ Don’t be so frightened,” she said. “ He’s 
overstrained his heart, no doubt. Find a match. 
Light the lamps. Carin, help me lift him — 
well, drag him then. We’ll get him to the 
lounge. No hurry.” 

Azalea, fumbling for the matches and missing 
them, wondered why Miss Zillah had spoken 
to her. How had she known that her heart 
stopped beating at the sight of Keefe prone 
across the doorstep? And if she was more 
frightened than the others, how had she shown 
it — and why, indeed, should she care more than 
they? 

Then she knew. She was only a young girl, 
but she knew. Somehow, mysteriously and 
beautifully in this lonely old world, we are able 
to pick out our own. We know, as we eye them, 
those who will make us feel befriended and 
comfortable and safe. At least, we think we 
192 


KEEFE 


193 


know, and even when we find we have been mis- 
taken, we have had the sweetness of the hour of 
apparent discovery. Yes, it was true; Azalea 
admitted it as with trembling hands she lighted 
the lamps, shuddering at the sound of that body 
being dragged across the floor. Keefe O’Con- 
nor, who had said that he did not know his 
own right name, who admitted that his life had 
been strange and sad and unsettled, had seemed 
to her, from the first, like some one she always 
had known — some one it would be a wicked 
folly to lose out of her life. 

Pa McBirney had warned her that she was 
too impulsive. He had told her that she must 
watch out for this very thing, and she had 
promised him that she would try to put a guard 
upon herself. Yet by a swift understanding 
which she could not explain, she had felt from 
the first that she could trust this lad; could for- 
give him when he needed forgiveness, and take 
life as it came, with poverty or plenty, with 
good or ill luck, if he were near to praise her for 
the long day’s work, or to laugh with her when 
play-time came. And now perhaps he was 
dying! 

There, the lamps were lighted at last! She 


194 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


had touched a match to the kindling in the fire- 
place; she had tossed on a log. She was willing 
to do anything rather than turn her face and 
look upon that white one on the couch where 
Aunt Zillah and Carin, breathing hard, had 
managed to lift the inert body of her friend. 

“ Make some black coffee, quick, Azalea,” 
she heard Aunt Zillah saying. “ Make it very 
strong. Carin, come hold the light while I look 
in my medicine case.” 

Black coffee, very strong! How did one make 
that? Azalea could not think. “ Quick, quick,” 
Aunt Zillah had said. Azalea gave up thinking, 
because her hands were doing the work. She 
found that she could trust them, that some faith- 
ful servant in her confused house of thought 
was doing the work for her. The coffee was 
ground, the fire was lighted, the pot set on — 
all as it should be — and still it'was not of coffee 
that she was thinking, but of that white face 
which she would not look at; that fluttering 
breath that seemed to cease. 

She could hear Miss Zillah slapping the cold 
hands of the boy there on the couch; could hear 
her speaking to him and getting no answer. She 
wondered why Carin didn’t come to her to say 


KEEFE 


195 


something — to tell her how he was faring. Did 
they expect her to think of nothing but coffee, 
coffee, coffee — particularly when it seemed 
never to boil, never to get where it would be of 
any use? 

When she carried the coffee into the living 
room, he was breathing heavily. His eyes were 
partly opened, and Miss Zillah had loosened his 
shirt at the neck, and had poured water over 
his face and hair. It made him look so strange — 
so different from the way he usually looked. 
And yet, though he looked so different, he 
seemed familiar, too, in a new way. 

“ It’s not of himself that he reminds me,” 
thought Azalea, “ but of some one else.” The 
resemblance was pleasant to her, as if the person 
he made her think of was some one she liked, 
though she could not think who it was. 

Miss Zillah lifted him up and held him steady 
while Azalea fed him from the spoon with the 
strong black coffee. 

“ Don’t let your hand tremble,” said Miss 
Zillah rather sharply. “ Don’t think about your 
fears, Azalea. He’s got to have the coffee. His 
heart needs stimulating. Give it to him and 
stop trembling.” 


196 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


Azalea wouldn’t have supposed it possible 
that by the mere exercise of will she could stop 
the shaking of her hand, but when Miss Zillah 
spoke to her that way, she steadied herself. 

Did the moments go fast or slow? She could 
not tell. She gave him the full cup of coffee 
and went for more. Carin had heated some hot 
water and had put it in rubber bags at his hands 
and feet. He had been wrapped warm, and 
now, little by little, the horrid purple of his 
lips began to turn into something more like their 
usual color. His lids opened with a flutter and 
he saw those about him. He smiled piteously, 
like a little boy, and closed his eyes again. 

“ Perfect rest is what he needs now,” said 
Miss Zillah. “ He may have to be quiet for 
days. It takes much longer to rest a heart than 
it does to tire it. Go to bed now, girls. What 
a day you’ve had! Mercy, what would your 
people think, Carin, if they knew all you have 
been through? Don’t think of getting up in the 
morning, or of going to school. The very 
thought of your falling ill distresses me.” 

It seemed outrageous to leave the gentle Miss 
Zillah there, her face all drawn with anxiety, 


KEEFE 197 

alone with that almost unconscious boy, but she 
insisted upon having her way. 

“ I’ll call you,” she assured the girls, “ if 
there’s anything you can do.” 

“ Any least thing — ” begged Azalea. 

Miss Zillah nodded. So the two crept away 
to their bed behind the great chimney and the 
screens, but they did not undress; only lay down 
in their wrappers and with the light burning 
beside them. Carin dropped into a heavy sleep 
and lay there so sunken in the bed that Azalea 
had her to worry about too. Being of knightly 
spirit and rescuing folk in distress was rather 
an expensive business, it appeared. If anything 
happened to Carin or to Keefe, would the rescue 
of the Panthers have been worth it? It was not 
a pleasant question to dwell upon, and Azalea 
tried not to think of the answer. 

She was not sure whether she slept or not. 
The wall between sleeping and waking was 
transparent, like glass, and she could see through 
it. So it was a relief when morning came and 
she could get out of bed. She was stiff and half 
sick, but when she had taken her cold bath in 
the little dressing room they had contrived in 


198 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


the shed, and had got into her clean clothes, she 
began to feel better. Carin tried in vain to 
shake her sleepiness off, but she was so wan and 
worn-looking that Azalea sternly commanded 
her to keep her bed. In the front room Miss 
Zillah slept wearily in the arm chair, and Keefe, 
his eyes wide open, lay watching her. He held 
up his finger for silence as Azalea drew near, 
and she slipped out again, comforted at his 
appearance, to get the breakfast. 

In the midst of it, she saw some one coming 
down the path. It was Paralee, swinging along 
with her great stride. She still wore her 
hideous, outgrown, ragged dress, but for all that 
she looked changed from what she had been. 
Her hair was smoothly combed, her face prop- 
erly washed, and there was hope in her eye and 
decision in her step. 

Azalea slipped out of the door to speak to her. 

“ How be you all? ” she asked. 

Azalea told her, hastily. 

“ Ain’t that a pity, now? ” sighed Paralee. 
“ I knew that boy wasn’t peart enough for such 
a long tug. I wanted him to let me carry pa 
part of the way, but he wouldn’t hear to it. He’s 
jest beat out; that’s what ails him. Lying quiet 


KEEFE 


199 


is the best thing he can do, I reckon.” 

“ Yes, I suppose so,” said Azalea anxiously. 
“ And, Oh, Paralee, how ever am I to get over 
to school to-day? I’m so stiff I can hardly move ; 
and there’s so much to be done here at the house 
that I don’t believe I ought to leave.” 

“ Ain’t it a pity,” said Paralee, kicking 
viciously at a stone, “ that I ain’t got my eddica- 
tion yet! I would jest love to do that thar 
teaching for you-all.” 

“ I wish to goodness you could,” sighed 
Azalea fervently. “ But you seem to be the 
only person around here who even wants to do 
such a thing — ” 

She broke off her sentence suddenly, remem- 
bering that she had heard Mr. Rowantree say 
that teaching was the one thing in the way of 
work that he actually enjoyed. She told Paralee. 

“ He’d do it,” she cried, “ if only I had some 
way of getting word to him. It seems such a 
pity to break up school just when we’re getting 
it so nicely started, doesn’t it? And this is little 
Skully Simms’ first day, too! I couldn’t really 
answer for what might happen if he got there 
and met the Coulters and their friends face to 
face.” 


200 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ Oh, that thar Bud Coulter’ll keep his word 
about not tetching the little cuss,” said Paralee 
placidly. (She was a Coulter in her sympa- 
thies.) “ But I’ll tell you what, Miss Azalea, 
you jest say the word and I’ll run shortcuts over 
to the Rowantrees and tell them what’s doing.” 

“ Oh, will you, Paralee? Dare you? Oughtn’t 
you to be with your father and mother? ” 

“Nope. They’re all right, I reckon. Mr. 
Thompson, he’s to take ’em down to the after- 
noon train. Pa ain’t looking very peart, but it 
warn’t to be expected that he would. Ma acts 
like she was scared to death, but Mis’ McEvoy’s 
fixing her out in proper clothes. Mr. McEvoy, 
he’s gone down to Bee Tree to do some tele- 
graphing about the hospital pa’s to go in. My, 
ain’t they rich! ” 

“ Rich! ” cried Azalea aghast. “ Who? ” 

“ Oh, the McEvoys and Mr. Thompson.” 
“Rich!” repeated Azalea. But the words 
died on her lips. So Paralee thought the 
McEvoys in their two-roomed cabin, and good 
old Haystack with his fiddle, rich! She only 
said: 

“ Have you had breakfast, Paralee? ” 

The girl shook her head. 


KEEFE 


201 


“ Come in then. Things are cooked now, and 
you can eat and then run to Rowantree’s. But 
you are obliging, Paralee! ” 

Paralee looked at her with something akin to 
impatience. 

“ Say,” she said deep in her throat, “ don’t 
you thank me for nothing, you hear? If I was 
to crawl on my hands and knees around this 
here mountain, it wouldn’t even up with what 
you’re doing for me. Why, Miss Azalea, I 
thought I’d go crazy thinking about my pa and 
ma in that thar place — plumb crazy, that’s 
what I thought I’d go. Ma laid it up against 
Pete for running away. I tell you, he had to. 
It got so awful he just had to.” 

“ I suppose he did,” said Azalea sympathetic- 
ally. She knew very well — for she was still a 
child — that there are troubles so dark and hope- 
less that children cannot endure them. 

A few moments later, standing by the door, 
she saw Paralee striding along the old, over- 
grown road that ran toward Rowantree Hall. 

She had confidence, somehow, that Mr. 
Rowantree would not fail her. Indolent he 
might be, odd and proud and vexatious he unde- 
niably was, yet he had a reverence for the seeking 


202 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


mind, and she felt he would not let these moun- 
tain children ask in vain. 

She was quite right. An hour before school 
time she saw him mounted on a sorry nag, which 
he rode magnificently and as if it were the most 
dashing of horse flesh, coming toward her door. 
He dismounted with a splendid gesture, and 
riding crop in hand, came forward toward the 
Oriole’s Nest. By this time Aunt Zillah was 
sleeping properly in her bed, and Keefe, wide- 
eyed and restless, lay on the sofa with instruc- 
tions neither to move nor talk. So Azalea met 
Mr. Rowantree outside the door and hurriedly 
told him all the story of the past two days. As 
he stood there on the little porch, he, being tall, 
could look well over her head at the figure of 
Keefe lying stretched upon the sofa. It was a 
sight to make him sorry, but not one, it would 
seem, to hold him fascinated. Yet he gazed and 
gazed; then, trying to look away, looked in 
again. 

“ Who is it that boy looks like, Miss Azalea? ” 
he asked. “ Somebody — ” 

“ I know,” replied Azalea under her breath. 
“ Somebody — but who? ” 

They could not decide, and let it pass. Azalea 


KEEFE 


203 


went over to the schoolhouse with Mr. Rowan- 
tree and introduced the pupils to him, and gave 
him an idea of what was to be studied for the 
day. Mr. Rowantree looked somewhat out of 
place in the little schoolhouse, to tell the truth; 
he was so tall, so fine, so altogether magnificent 
with his reddish brown hair and whiskers and 
his snowy suit of frayed linen. The children 
seemed rather awed by him, but Azalea noticed 
that little Skully Simms kept close to him, pre- 
ferring him, with all his strangeness, to the 
Coulters, although the warlike Bud had given 
bond for good behavior. 

When she got back home, the house was very 
still. Carin was lying in the hammock asleep. 
There were circles under her eyes, and the lovely 
wild rose bloom was gone from her cheek. 

“ I must take better care of her,” thought 
Azalea for the twentieth time, stealing past her 
into the house. Aunt Zillah was giving Keefe 
some milk, and treating him as gently as if he 
were glass and might break. 

“ Remember,” she said as she left the room, 
“ he’s not to talk. Two or three days of perfect 
rest will, in my opinion, make him all right. It 
isn’t anything unusual for a young man to over- 


204 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


strain his heart. He might have done it in school 
athletics and then he wouldn’t have been a hero 
at all. Mr. Thompson was looking for you, 
Zalie. He starts in a short time for Bee Tree, 
so that Mr. Panther may have a little rest 
between his wagon ride and his train journey. 
Mr. Thompson is going with him straight to 
the hospital. Carin gave him the money — 
except for a little — a very little — addition 
which I made. So now, all is well again, or on 
the way to be well, and you must go and lie 
down. Take a glass of milk first and sleep as 
long as you can. I’m going out to see to the 
chickens. They’ve been sadly neglected, poor 
things.” 

Azalea stood in the cool, tidy little room 
vaguely regarding the lad on the sofa. He 
looked amazingly long as he lay stretched out, 
all relaxed and pallid like that. The “ sad- 
glad ” look which Azalea so often had noticed on 
his face, was there now. He held out his hand 
for her to come nearer and when she was close 
enough he whispered: 

“ I oughtn’t to be staying here, Miss Azalea. 
It’s making trouble I am for Miss Pace and the 
rest of you. Anyway, it’s not fitting for me to 


KEEFE 


205 


be here. Isn’t this a sort of nunnery? ” He 
smiled in his sidelong, whimsical fashion. “ If 
my tent was to be fixed up right I could wait on 
myself well enough, and Mr. McEvoy could be 
bringing me over a drop of soup now and then 
or a pail of milk.” 

Azalea made no protest, for she knew how he 
felt. She would have felt the same way in his 
place. 

“ We love to have you here,” she said softly. 
“ We truly love it. And it wouldn’t be safe yet 
for you to go to your tent. But I was 
thinking — ” 

“ Yes?” 

“ How would it be if you went to Rowantree 
Hall, and got some one — Bud Coulter, or some 
one like that — to wait on you? ” 

To Azalea’s surprise he looked up with eager- 
ness in the eyes that a moment before had been 
so lackluster. 

“ Oh, I wonder if it could be arranged,” he 
said. “ I should like that. I can’t tell why, but 
I should like it more than anything. Miss 
Azalea, will you see if it can be done? I’m 
terribly tired. I — I should like beyond words 
to go there.” 


206 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


A sharp little grip of jealousy that he should 
prefer Rowantree Hall to the Oriole’s Nest had 
Azalea by the throat and kept her from answer- 
ing. But she was ashamed of that pang even 
while she suffered from it, and nodding reassur- 
ingly, she went into the kitchen to attend to the 
neglected duties there. 


CHAPTER XII 


THE BLAB BOY 

Meantime, Mr. Rowantree (who loved teach- 
ing) was having his experiences. He had been 
in the habit of instructing his own children, who, 
from early infancy had been taught to listen 
and to learn. Indeed, there was nothing they 
would rather do. They knew almost all of the 
great stories for children that have been written 
by the different peoples of the world, and they 
were so used to having their father speak partly 
in English, partly in Latin and partly in French, 
that they did not mind that at all. Very likely 
he may have ventured to throw in a little Ger- 
man or Italian now and then — he certainly 
could have done so if he wished. Then, too, he 
had taught them their notes in the music book; 
and he had made figures seem like a game to 
them. Really, he had done little else since they 
were born but train them and teach them, and 
their minds answered to his as the strings of a 
harp respond to a piano. 

207 


208 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


Imagine then, his feelings, when he was left 
alone to deal with the twenty-one pupils — 
including Mrs. McIntosh — of the Ravenel 
school. He tried his best to realize how little 
they knew, but he really could not do it. He 
had begun with Skully Simms because Azalea 
had particularly begged him to look after the 
boy, owing to the peculiar circumstances under 
which he had come to school, and he set him a 
little reading lesson to con. Then he turned to 
Mrs. McIntosh, whose eagerness to learn, grown 
woman as she was, seemed to him very touching. 
But he was interrupted by Skully, who in a high- 
pitched voice and a wild singsong something 
like that used by the traveling preachers at a 
camp meeting, was going on : 

“ T-h-e, the, c-a-t, cat, s-a-w, saw, a r-a-t, 
rat — ” 

“ What do you mean by that noise, sir? ” 
thundered Mr. Rowantree. “ Can’t you study 
to yourself? ” 

Skully looked terribly embarrassed and buried 
his scarlet face down behind his book. Mr. 
Rowantree regarded him something as a king 
looks at a cat — a stray, wayside cat — and 
resumed his instruction, only to hear a moment 


THE BLAB BOY 209 

later the wild, high notes of Skully breaking 
out again. 

He turned on the little boy in his most majestic 
manner. 

“ Will you have the goodness to tell me — ” 
he began. But he was interrupted by a chorus 
of explanatory voices. 

“ He’s been to a blab school, sir,” the other 
children declared. “ He don’t know how to 
study no other way. Once you’ve got the blab 
way o’ l’arning, you can’t do no other way.” 

Mr. Rowantree grasped the meaning of the 
statement. He had heard of the “ blab schools ” 
where each pupil studied his lesson aloud, often 
at the top of his lungs. He looked about him 
expecting to see the Coulter crowd doubled up 
with scornful mirth. But he saw nothing of the 
sort. The children there understood the diffi- 
culties of Skully. Nay, they firmly believed that 
when once the blab habit was settled on a person 
it could not be got rid of. They expected to see 
the schoolmaster fall into a terrible rage and 
they naturally looked forward to it with a not 
altogether innocent glee. But Mr. Rowantree, 
it seemed, could be a surprising person. 

“ I beg your pardon,” he said to Skully 


210 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


politely. “ I didn’t understand. It will be 
rather bothersome for you to break off the habit 
of studying aloud, but of course you must, for it 
puts other people out very much, don’t you see? 
This morning I will allow you to move your lips 
as you study, but you must not speak aloud. By 
to-morrow I shall hope that you can study with- 
out even moving your lips.” 

“Yessir,” said poor Skully, and he tried as 
hard as ever he could with his untutored, eager 
little mind, to do as he should in the school which 
he so very much wished to attend. But it was 
hard work, and from time to time his high- 
pitched singsong voice would break from the 
whisper to which it was held in leash and would 
cause Mr. Rowantree to hold up a warning 
finger. Then, Skully, scarlet-faced and wretched, 
would try again. 

This, however, was not the only excitement of 
the day. Just before noon the instructor was 
surprised to see a very long, very thin, very dust- 
colored man appear in the doorway. It was not 
only his homespun clothes which appeared dust- 
colored. His hair and skin, even his eyes, had 
a faded yellowish hue. 

He leaned forward, peering in the room 


THE BLAB BOY 


211 


curiously, his high, arched nose seeming to smell 
out what his eyes did not at first discover. Then 
he shot out his long arm and pointed at little 
Mrs. McIntosh, where she sat, her worn yet 
girlish face white with nervousness, and said: 

“ I want you-all to git out of this.” 

For a moment no one spoke. The woman had 
not arisen. A little look of trembling bravery 
shone in her eyes. She seemed to be seeking for 
some words in which to express her thoughts and 
not finding them. 

“You hear?” cried the man. “You-all git 
out of that thar seat and come to home whar you 
belong. Thissen ain’t no place for a married 
woman. You hear?” 

Mr. Rowantree had been stroking his long 
ruddy mustache with his white hand, waiting, 
it seemed, for developments. But now he came 
forward, bearing upon his handsome face a look 
not unlike that he had turned upon Skully a 
while before. 

“ Mrs. McIntosh is your wife, I suppose,” he 
said in his easy, pleasant way. 

“ You jest bet she is,” said the man defiantly, 
“ and I want her to home. She’s making me 
the laughing stock of the hull place.” 


212 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ Oh,” said Mr. Rowantree, quite politely. 
“What are they laughing at? Excuse me if I 
don’t quite understand.” 

“ They’re laughing because a married woman 
leaves her home and sets in school with childer, 
l’arning like she was five years old.” 

“ They probably are not aware that men and 
women of the most learned sort go to universi- 
ties until they are much older than Mrs. McIn- 
tosh. Naturally, they wouldn’t know that, would 
they? It’s not the kind of thing that folk here 
on the mountain would be liable to hear about.” 

“We know ’nough,” said the man sullenly. 
“ We ken git along without nobody’s help.” 

“Now, really,” said Mr. Rowantree in a 
pleasant tone, “ you don't get on very well, you 
know. You couldn’t get on with men beyond 
the mountains — wouldn’t measure up with 
them in any way, except perhaps, in the use of a 
gun. And that’s because you don’t know the 
things your excellent wife is trying to learn. 
She already knows her letters, writes her name, 
and is beginning to read books. Of course that 
puts her quite a way ahead of you, Mr. 
McIntosh.” 


THE BLAB BOY 213 

Mr. Rowantree still stroked his mustache with 
a white hand and smiled. 

“ I don’t allow no woman belonging to me 
to know more than I know,” said Mr. McIntosh 
in what was meant to be a very manly manner. 
“ What knowing thar is around our house is for 
me.” 

“ Too late, too late,” cried Mr. Rowantree, 
waving his hand magnificently in the air. “ You 
see, she knows more than you this very minute. 
She’s got the key to the puzzle. You can’t stop 
her now. She’s got something you haven’t — 
something that puts her in line with the world 
beyond these mountains — something that will 
comfort and amuse her as long as she lives. 
That’s the wonder about learning; once you get 
it in your head, nobody can take it away from 
you.” 

Mr. Rowantree regarded the mountaineer 
with an unflinching eye. 

“ I reckon I ken take it out o’ her,” said the 
man, his eyes flashing. 

“ No, you can’t,” retorted Mr. Rowantree. 
“ You may think you can, but you can’t. She’s 
got hold of a secret that makes her more power- 
ful than you, though of course your muscles are 


214 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


much stronger than hers. Mark this, Mr. 
McIntosh: No matter how things go with her, 
she’ll always have a kind of happiness that no 
one can take away.” 

There was a little pause and then Mr. Rowan- 
tree went on. 

“ What’s more, she’s getting something that 
she’ll not want to keep to herself. That’s the 
way with folk who learn. They want to pass 
their knowledge on. She’ll be passing it to her 
children and they’ll come up in the world. You 
can’t tell anything about how far they’ll come 
up. They may get to be the best known and 
most useful men and women in the state. They 
say children take from their mother, and your 
children have a good mother, Mr. McIntosh. 
She’s a woman with a clear, sensible mind, who 
wants to lift herself up out of poverty and 
ignorance. That’s the sort of a wife you have, 
sir, and I congratulate you.” 

The preposterously pleasant Mr. Rowantree 
advanced upon the glowering McIntosh and 
held out his hand. In bewilderment the moun- 
taineer took it and received a grip that surprised 
him. 


THE BLAB BOY 


215 


“Aren’t you proud of her?” demanded Mr. 
Rowantree. “ I know what it is to be proud of 
a wife, sir. I have one that’s much too good for 
me, and I realize it. Yes, it’s a great thing for 
a man to have a wife he can be proud of; one 
that can do something he can’t.” 

“ I ken do what she’s doing,” said Mr. McIn- 
tosh defiantly. “ Thar ain’t no reason that I ken 
see, why I can’t do it as well as her.” 

“ I doubt it,” said Mr. Rowantree, shaking 
his head, “you might — but I doubt it, Mr. 
McIntosh.” 

“ I’ll bet you a young shote that I ken! ” cried 
the man. 

“ I’ll bet you a brace of my ducks that you 
can’t,” retorted Mr. Rowantree. 

“ Done! ” said Mr. McIntosh. “ Give me a 
book. Set down and tell me about this here 
Taming.” 

Mr. Rowantree turned to the school. 

“ A brace of ducks against a young shote that 
Mr. McIntosh cannot learn to read,” he said 
gravely. “You are the witnesses. Coulter, 
kindly bring me a primer from that closet. You 
will all observe that I play fair. I shall do my 


216 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


best to teach him, but I frankly confess I have 
my doubts. He has looked down on book-learn- 
ing and that is against him.” 

Mr. McIntosh made no reply. He had hung 
his hat on a nail and now he drew his one 
“ gallus ” a little tighter as if to prepare for a 
struggle. At the opposite corner of the room 
from his wife, he bent over his book. Mr. 
Rowantree drew a chair up beside him. 

u We will give our attention, if you please,” 
he said in his mellow voice, and in a perfectly 
matter-of-fact way, “ to the first letter of the 
alphabet.” 

Young Mrs. McIntosh bent very low over her 
page and only the children sitting next saw her 
shoulders shaking with laughter. The children 
themselves, determined not to spoil sport, kept 
their mirth till they should be upon the moun- 
tain paths. Then they would have their chuckle 
there over the way McIntosh “ was tricked into 
1’arnin’.” Now they devoted themselves to their 
own lessons, and away in the backs of their 
minds a new idea was growing. Why shouldn’t 
their own fathers and mothers come to school? 
Why shouldn’t they all know how to read? It 
was just as Mr. Rowantree said; they couldn’t 


THE BLAB BOY 


217 


“ match up ” with the men and women beyond 
the mountains. They were different — terribly 
different. Oh, yes, proud as they were, these 
children of the mountain clans, they knew that. 
Their sisters weren’t like Miss Azalea and Miss 
Carin — not at all like them. Their fathers 
weren’t like Mr. Rowantree; and though in 
some ways Mr. Rowantree was not liked by 
them, and his disinclination to work was noted 
even by these folk of easy-going ways, still, he 
was different. He knew about the great world 
beyond; about what people were doing in the 
cities; he was acquainted with what other men 
thought and wrote, and he could talk in a won- 
derful way. Just see how he had come it over 
McIntosh, and taken the “ meanness ” out of 
him! 

It was the red-headed boy, Dibblee Sikes, the 
most sociable child in the school, who put into 
words the thing that had been stirring in the 
children’s minds. He came up to Mr. Rowan- 
tree at the nooning. 

“ Please, sir,” he said, “ I’ve been thinking 
about something.” 

“ You look as if you had,” said Mr. Rowan- 
tree cordially. “ Well, I always count it a 


218 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


pleasant day when I have a new idea. What 
have you thought of, Sikes? ” 

“ Why, seeing Mrs. McIntosh take up with 
books, sir, and Mr. McIntosh set down to beat 
her out in learning, made me think of having a 
school for the grown folks. They need it just 
as much as us young-uns.” 

“ They certainly do, Sikes, and do you know, 
the same notion has been in my head ever since 
McIntosh joined us? Just look at him, will you? 
He’s sitting over there on the ground, studying 
like a good fellow. Can’t even stop to eat.” 

“ Maybe he ain’t got nothing to eat, seeing 
he didn’t count on staying when he come.” Sikes 
grinned at his instructor, and Mr. Rowantree 
returned the smile, accompanying it with a 
gentle wink of the left eye. 

“ Yes, his wife offered him half of her 
luncheon, though she didn’t have much.” 

“ Then I reckon he’s eating with one hand 
and studying with the other,” said Dibblee 
blithely. “ But how about that school, Mr. 
Rowantree? ” 

“ Well, I suppose it would be impossible for 
most of them to come in the daytime. They 


THE BLAB BOY 


219 


have to attend to their work, don’t they? ” Mr. 
Rowantree asked the question rather vaguely. 
It was a subject about which he was not very 
well informed. 

Dibblee nodded. “ Sure they do,” he said in 
the language he had picked up from some 
“ tourist ” boys at Bee Tree. 

“ What we need here, then, is a night school. 
Everything could be made safe in the homes, 
the big children could be set to look after the 
little ones, and then the fathers and mothers 
could come here. What do you think of that, 
Sikes?” 

“ It would be a mighty good thing, Mr. Row- 
antree, but there’s one thing stands in the way.” 
Dibblee wore a “ studyin’ ” look which sat oddly 
on his round, smiling face. 

“ And what is that, pray? ” 

“ Well, you see, half the time it’s darker than 
a hat on the roads, with the trees growing over 
them and all. Some folks around here ain’t 
even got lanterns, and anyway, if they had, they 
wouldn’t want to go out such pitch black nights.” 

“ Then they could come on moonlight nights,” 
cried Mr. Rowantree triumphantly. “ We’ll 


220 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


have a moonlight school, Sikes. Moonlight will 
be a sign and token that school has taken up. 
What do you say to that? ” 

“ I say it’s just the very thing,” cried Dibblee 
Sikes. “Then my ma can come, can’t she? 
Why, she’s jest as knowing as she can be — keeps 
me laughing at her purty near all the time I’m 
home. She’s got more rules for cooking than 
anybody hereabouts, and she can remember the 
greatest songs — about fifty verses long, some of 
them be — about things that has happened in 
this here country. But she carries it all in her 
head. She can’t read, jest because she ain’t been 
taught. If she could read she’d be the smartest 
woman anywhere, almost.” 

Mr. Rowantree was a man with his own faults, 
but for every fault he had a virtue, and now his 
eyes were alight like the boy’s. 

“ Right you are, Sikes,” he said. “ And we’ll 
teach her. A moonlight school we shall have, 
and with the permission of Miss Carson and her 
friend, I will teach it. I’ve been a happy man, 
Sikes, but I haven’t been a particularly useful 
one. So now I’ll surprise myself by turning over 
a new leaf. I’m going to be useful, if teaching 
my neighbors what I know is — ” 


THE BLAB BOY 


221 


“ Oh, Mr. Rowantree,” interrupted the boy, 
“ I wisht school was over so I could run home 
and tell my ma. I know she’ll want to come, 
and she’ll make other folks want to come, too. 
You’d be real surprised the way my ma can get 
folks to do things.” 

“ No, I wouldn’t,” said Mr. Rowantree; “ not 
if she’s like you, Sikes. You can get folk to do 
things, too. You’ve got me to take a job, and by 
Jove, I didn’t know it was in me to do such a 
thing.” 

The laziest man in the community smiled at 
the red-headed boy, and the boy grinned back, 
and in doing so revealed three vacancies in the 
two rows of teeth. It was “ tooth-dropping ” 
time with him, and he was not beautiful. 

The afternoon, it must be confessed, seemed 
rather tedious to Mr. Rowantree. He wondered 
where Azalea and Carin had found their 
patience. Nay, it took something more than 
patience to sow the seeds of knowledge in these 
uncultivated minds. Yet he had to admit, that 
though uncultivated, they were not rocky and 
sterile soil. On the contrary, beneath all their 
shyness, the children were wild to learn. Para- 
lee was, of course, not present that day, so he 


222 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


missed the pleasure of instructing the one pupil 
who treated books as if they were food and she 
a starveling. 

One last odd incident closed the day of strange 
experiences for this new teacher. In spite of 
his utmost efforts, poor Skully had broken out 
every once in a while with his “ blabbing.” The 
children, rather strained and excited by the 
presence of their very learned instructor, finally 
“ got the giggles ” after the fashion of tired and 
nervous school children the world over. Even 
the gentle Mrs. McIntosh could not keep from 
a foolish “ snicker ” now and then as the wild 
cadences of Skully’s voice broke on the air and 
were choked back by a grimy hand clapped 
across his mouth. The poor little “ blab ” boy 
was covered with confusion, and finally, in 
despair, dropped his towseled head upon his 
arm and softly wept. 

The children, ashamed and sorry, did the very 
thing they did not want to do, and giggled all 
the more. And at that, up rose Bud Coulter, 
the hereditary enemy of little Skully. 

u Look a-here, you-all,” he said defiantly. “ I 
said that there kid should come to school and 
no harm should be done him. What I say I 


THE BLAB BOY 


223 


mean. Nobody but a Coulter ken take the 
stuffing out of a Simms, and this here Coulter 
is going to see that this here Simms is give a 
chanct.” 

“ Go home, Skully, my lad,” said Mr. Rowan- 
tree kindly. “ It’s been a hard day for you, but 
you’ve done wonders. Practice studying to 
yourself awhile this evening, and be here 
to-morrow morning with the rest. You’ll come 
out ahead. Miss Azalea was very happy that 
you were to be in her school. You see, she and 
Miss Carin have given up a good deal to come 
up here to help you young folk along, and they 
want everybody in the country round about to 
get some good out of the school. They want 
you to make their sacrifice and hard work worth 
while. So you’ll come to-morrow, won’t you, 
son? ” 

Skully lifted a tear-stained face and looked 
at the teacher with weary eyes. 

“ You bet, sir,” he said sadly. 

“ And please be so good as to run over to Miss 
Azalea’s house to see how they are getting on 
there, and bring me back word.” 

Skully cast a look of gratitude at the man who 
was making his escape easy, and finding his bat- 


224 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


tered corn husk hat, fled from the school. 

Incredibly soon he was back again. 

“ Miss Zalie says for you to come over to the 
house soon as ever school closes, sir,” Skully 
reported. “ She says to tell you Mis’ Rowan- 
tree is there and Mr. Keefe is mighty poorly, 
and Mis’ Rowantree wants to take him home 
with her.” 

An hour later when school closed, the teacher 
found Skully sitting on a log, book in hand, 
studying with one finger acting as monitor to 
his lips. 

The children pretended not to notice and 
slipped away after their fashion down the moun- 
tain paths. Mrs. McIntosh walked with her 
little daughter, but while Mr. Rowantree 
watched, he saw McIntosh stride forward, throw 
his little girl pick-a-back over his shoulder, and 
lope down the trail behind his wife. 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE HERMIT THRUSH 

Keefe O’Connor had slept for hours, heavily, 
and Miss Zillah, stealing in every few minutes 
to look at him, was not well satisfied. 

“ I’d give anything if we had a good doctor 
at hand,” she said to the girls. “ Rest is a fine 
thing, of course, but it isn’t always enough. 
Keefe seems badly in need of stimulation. I 
don’t believe his heart would have been strained 
like that, great as the exertion of carrying poor 
Mr. Panther was, if he hadn’t been run down. 
Probably he hasn’t been having half enough to 
eat, for one thing. Cooking for himself the way 
he has is a bad thing. We ought to have had 
him in here with us oftener. I blame myself 
very much. But I hesitated to act, knowing 
so little of him and being responsible for you 
two girls.” 

In course of time Mrs. McEvoy came over, 
and she, too, tiptoed into the room to look at 
the sleeping youth. 


225 


226 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ I’ve got medicine for almost everything that 
can ail a body,” she said when she had joined 
the others on the porch, “ but the trouble is, I 
don’t know what is the matter with him. He 
seems clean beat out. Now, if only Mrs. Row- 
antree was here she might be able to give us 
some notion of what to do. She reads doctor 
books so that she can care for her children.” 

Azalea snatched at the idea. 

“ Let’s do have Mrs. Rowantree come,” she 
said. “ Now that Mrs. McEvoy speaks of it, I 
realize that I’ve been wanting Mary Cecily 
Rowantree all day.” 

“ What a queer girl you are, Azalea,” smiled 
Carin. “ Every little while you put on a mys- 
terious look and say something eerie, as if you 
had been talking with spooks.” 

“ I’m not one bit spooky, Carin, and you know 
it,” said Azalea rather indignantly, “ but now 
and then I do have feelings — ” she did not try 
to finish her sentence, but stared before her. 

“ That’s what I meant,” retorted Carin. 
“You have feelings! And you look as if you 
did.” 

“ We are all mysteriously moved to do certain 
things,” said the gentle Miss Zillah, who did 


THE HERMIT THRUSH 


227 


not like her girls even to make a pretense of 
teasing each other. “ I myself would like to 
have Mrs. Rowantree here. She knew Keefe 
before we did, and she is of the same nationality, 
and so possibly might have some peculiar sym- 
pathy with him. I also think we should send 
for a physician.” 

“ There doesn’t seem to be any use in sending 
for physicians to come up here,” Carin put in. 
“ Just think how hard I tried to get one for Mr. 
Panther. Let’s have Mrs. Rowantree over by 
all means.” 

So Miles McEvoy, a much busier man these 
days than he had been for years before, under- 
took to go for Mrs. Rowantree, though he was 
only just back from carrying Haystack Thomp- 
son and Mr. and Mrs. Panther to the station. 

Carin decided to walk down the road a way 
to meet the wagon bringing Mary Cecily 
Rowantree; and Miss Zillah, seeing the pros- 
pect of another guest, went into the kitchen to 
stir up a cake and compound a custard. But 
Azalea did not move. She sat near the door 
and from time to time looked in at the delicate 
face of the sleeping youth. It appeared almost 
transparent as he lay there, his eyes closed and 


228 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


yet not quite closed, his lips trembling a little 
from the fluttering of his over-taxed heart. 

“ Oh, I don’t want anything to happen to 
him,” her heart cried within her. “ How sunny 
and brave he is — and yet how sad, in that 
strange quiet way. We know him, and yet we 
don’t know him. If he should die, we wouldn’t 
be able to send word to any of his friends, for 
we haven’t an idea who they are. But of course 
he mustn’t die. There’s no reason why he should 
when he’s so young and all. And yet — ” 

The boy opened his eyes drowsily and looked 
about him. At first he failed to remember 
where he was, and half-raised himself on his 
elbow. Then he sank back, white and trembling. 
Azalea poured a glass of water from the jar 
they kept on the window sill, and hastening to 
him, lifted his head and gave him the cool drink. 

Keefe smiled gratefully. 

“ You’re good,” he said simply. Then, after 
a pause: “ Sit down, please.” 

Azalea took a low mountain chair and brought 
it near, so that she could face him. That 
mysterious feeling which had been hanging over 
her all day, whispering to her that something 


THE HERMIT THRUSH 


229 


strange was about to happen, deepened curiously. 
Little chills ran lightly over her frame and she 
had to close her hands to keep her fingers from 
twitching. 

“ It must seem particularly silly to you that 
a fellow can’t do a little job like the one I did 
yesterday without going to pieces over it,” 
Keefe began. “ But I don’t believe I’ve ever 
been very strong. I have color in my face, and 
that rather fools people. It fools me too, and 
makes me think I’m of more account than I am.” 

“ It was a terribly hard piece of work you did 
yesterday,” replied Azalea softly. “ But per- 
fect rest will make you all right, Aunt Zillah 
thinks. If I were you, I wouldn’t talk, boy. Aunt 
Zillah says you’re not to move a finger, and I’m 
sure that means you’re not to move your tongue 
either.” 

Keefe shook his head. 

“ Never mind what anybody wants, Azalea. 
I’ve something to tell you and I’m going to do 
it now.” 

“ Oh, I wouldn’t, Keefe, really — ” 

Keefe lifted a languid hand, but it had 
authority in it. 


230 AZALEA AT . SUNSET GAP 


“ I’ve been wanting to tell you for a long 
time,” he said. “ You know, Zalie, if I wait — 
it may possibly be too late.” 

“No, no, Keefe, I won’t have you — ” 

“ Keep still, please. I’m going to tell you 
now, quickly, before anybody comes.” 

“ Go on then. Speak quietly. I’ll listen.” 

She realized suddenly that it was kinder and 
wiser to let him have his way. So she folded 
her hands in her lap, and sat as still as a stone — 
no, as still as a rosebush, for the wind rustled 
her pale green frock, and lifted the tendrils of 
her brown hair. 

“ Zalie,” he began, his voice at once uncertain 
yet determined, “ I told you, didn’t I, that I 
knew neither my name nor my kin? I am a 
waif, but not because I was not loved. That is 
what is queer and sad about it all. That is what 
keeps me always looking and hoping that some 
day — ” he broke off and rested for a minute. 
“ I must begin at the beginning,” he recom- 
menced. “ I must tell you what I remember. 
There was a pleasant home, somewhere, with a 
low window from which I could look down the 
street if I stood on my toes. There was a father, 
a mother, and a sister who played with me, and 


v. 



Keefe lifted a languid hand. “ I ’ve been wanting to tell 
yon for a long time/’ he said. 

1 





THE HERMIT THRUSH 


231 


whom I adored. Matey was what I called her. 
That little name is all I have to remember her by. 
I cannot even tell you my own last name. I was 
1 Little Brother.’ When any of the three said 
it, I was happy. ‘Little Brother!’ It is the 
thing I have loved best in all the memories — 
the way they said that. But father went away. 
There were darkened windows, a long black box, 
and all the house was changed. It was as ter- 
rible as if the sun had gone out of heaven. I 
was so lonely and sad it seemed as if I would die, 
and I remember always clinging to black 
skirts — sometimes my mother’s, sometimes my 
Matey’s.” 

He paused for a moment longer, his dark eyes 
darkening yet more, and throwing into relief the 
pallor of his face. Azalea was still immovable, 
but the look of her face changed. A warm, wild 
surmise banished something of the anxiety in it 
and flushed it with excitement. 

“ Then next, I remember the ship. Mother 
and Matey and I were on it with hundreds and 
hundreds of others, all crowded together sick- 
eningly. Mother was always in her bed, and 
Matey and I sat together, creeping out of 
people’s way, wrapped in an old plaid shawl. 


232 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


I would go to sleep beneath the shawl; and 
under the shelter of it she told me stories, 
while the wind flapped it against us. 
Then there came a day when — when my mother 
would not answer either Matey or myself. I 
heard Matey screaming and I screamed with 
her, and some women were good to us. One 
kept kissing me, though I didn’t want to be 
kissed. After that, I saw no more of mother. I 
know now they must have dropped her in the 
sea, but of course they told me nothing of that. 
There were only Matey and me crouching out of 
the wind beneath that old shawl, Matey crying 
in my hair and on my face, and trying to laugh 
and play with me.” 

He saw the changed look on Azalea’s face and 
could not quite make it out. 

“ So then, the landing day came, and sister 
and I were pushed down the gangplank with 
the others. I remember falling and losing hold 
of her hand, and getting up and catching at her 
skirt again. At least I thought it was her skirt. 
I ran down the wharf as fast as I could, holding 
on to that dress. Then I remember some one 
shrieking: ‘ It ain’t Jimmy at all! It’s another 
boy altogether! ’ And with that a woman seized 


THE HERMIT THRUSH 


233 


me by the arm and shook me till I screamed. 

‘ Who air you that’s takin’ the place of me 
Jimmy? ’ she asked. 

“ I have forgotten all the other words of that 
day, but I remember those. The people kept 
pouring and pouring along, and I think the 
woman left me to look for her Jimmy. So after 
a while I found myself in the street with the 
people and the carts and carriages dashing every 
way about me. I ran about like a crazy boy, 
too frightened to ask questions. Finally a man 
who was going along with a tin pail on his arm, 
stopped and picked me up. He tried to talk to 
me, but I was too frantic to listen, and anyway, 
I was only a baby. He took me to a poor home, 
a dark place with two rooms or maybe three, 
and there was a woman there who was good to 
me. I used to hear the two of them talking and 
saying that whoever I belonged to couldn’t have 
cared much for me or they’d have been looking 
for me. But afterward, I came to believe that 
they were not very anxious to have my people 
find me. They were homesick folk with no little 
ones, and they thought I was one of a great 
brood and would not be missed. So I lived with 
them, Azalea, till I was seven years of age.” 


234 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“Till you were seven!” breathed Azalea, 
leaning forward a little now. “ And then, 
Keefe?” 

“ And then good Bridget O’Connor, who had, 
in her way, been a mother to me, died. Mike 
O’Connor was fond of me, too, but how could 
he be looking after me, and himself away every 
day working on the street? Besides, said he to 
me: 1 You be different from us O’Connors, boy. 
It would be a shame to tie you down all your 
life to a man like me. Bridget knew it, God 
save her, but she wanted the sound of your voice 
in the house. I’ll put you with the good Sisters, 
and they’ll find a new fayther and mother for 
ye.’ So he did. He put me in an orphan 
asylum, and there I lived for three months, and 
at the end of that time I was taken by another 
lonely woman who wanted a child in her house.” 

“ Oh,” breathed Azalea, “ was she good to 
you, Keefe? You were so little — so dreadfully 
little! Was she good to you? ” 

A slight color had come back to Keefe’s face. 
His lips were no longer so blue and unnatural 
as they had been. He put out his hand and 
caught a little fold of Azalea’s frock between 
his fingers and held on to it as children hold on 


THE HERMIT THRUSH 


235 


to the dresses of the women they depend upon. 

“ She was good to me,” he said simply, “ with 
a wise goodness which did not let me be spoiled. 
She was not a married woman. Her name was 
Harriet Foster, and the name tells what she was 
like, simple and straightforward and practical. 
She had lost all of her family and was tired of 
living alone. She had been looking for some time 
for a child to help fill her life, and when she 
saw me, she seemed satisfied. I was satisfied, 
too, and not at all afraid of her even at first.” 

“ Won’t you rest awhile now, Keefe? ” broke 
in Azalea, trying desperately to do her duty. 
Keefe looked at the parted lips and shining eyes 
which betrayed her breathless inquisitiveness, 
and shook his head. 

“ Miss Foster did not make me her son by 
legal adoption,” he went on. “ She left my name 
as it was. Bridget had named me Keefe, which 
was her name before she was married, and dear 
old Mike had lent me the honorable name of 
O’Connor. So Keefe O’Connor I remained. 
But instead of the foul basement home I had 
known, here was a quiet, staid, respectable home; 
a three-storied red brick structure, cared for by 
self-respecting servants, furnished with pleasing 


236 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


old furniture, and presided over by Harriet 
Foster. She had a group of quiet, gracious 
friends like herself, whom she entertained at tea 
once a week, bringing me in to be shown off. I 
passed their teacups and sang little songs for 
them sometimes, and after I had begun to draw, 
was told to show them my drawings.” 

“ Did you love her? ” broke in Azalea. “ Did 
she seem like a mother to you? ” 

“ Love her? I felt contented with her; but 
she seldom kissed me even when I was a little 
fellow. She taught me to be very self-reliant 
and thorough, and gave me a fine discipline. 
We liked to be together. It was always a great 
day when we went out to the sea, or to the picture 
galleries. We could laugh together and be 
patient together over troubles. If that is loving, 
then we loved each other. But no, she didn’t 
seem like a mother to me. She seemed like Miss 
Foster, and that is what I called her.” 

“ Oh, poor little boy! ” 

“ Not so poor, Azalea, not so poor. Children 
aren’t poor when they’re given a chance to be 
themselves and aren’t driven from pillar to post 
by some tyrant. Miss Foster let me grow up to 
be myself. She fed me, clothed me, housed me, 


THE HERMIT THRUSH 


237 


and taught me her ideas of honor and kindness 
and right living. When she found that I wanted 
to be an artist, she put me in the way of becoming 
one. I lived with her till I was seventeen years 
of age. Then she, too, like my poor little mother 
and dear blowsy Bridget O’Connor, left me, and 
since then, I have been alone.” 

“Alone!” repeated Azalea beneath her 
breath. “ And never a word of your sister all 
these years, Keefe? ” 

She smiled at him so beautifully, bending 
forward, questioning him as it seemed, so almost 
gayly, that he looked at her in amazement. 

“ Not a word, Azalea, in all these years — not 
one word. I used to hope and pray to meet her, 
but after a time I tried to put it out of my mind. 
I didn’t want it to undermine me. We Irish 
are queer folk, Azalea. We can wear ourselves 
out with longing. I didn’t want to do that. Miss 
Foster had left me a little fortune; enough to let 
me keep on with my art studies and to give me 
a little start in life. I had to leave the com- 
fortable old house where I had spent such con- 
tented years, because that went to make a home 
for old ladies. But I lived on well enough in 
my attic — Oh, don’t be frightened at the word. 


238 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


I lived in an attic by choice. Then perhaps I 
overworked. At any rate, the doctor said I must 
get out of the city and live in these mountains 
for two or three years. So here I am, piling up 
canvases in Miles McEvoy’s barn and as happy 
as anyone need be, especially since I met you — 
you people, Zalie. It may seem odd to you, but 
these few weeks here with the Rowantrees and 
‘ you-all ’ at Oriole’s Nest, have been the hap- 
piest of my life.” 

“ I don’t think it odd at all,” cried Azalea. 
“ Oh, Keefe, I think it the most natural thing in 
the world.” 

“ Why? ” he asked, astonished at her tone. But 
she remembered that dragged and wearied heart 
of his and putting her lips tight together, would 
say nothing. He had to take her smiling silences 
for his answer. 

Then, before he could urge her, some one 
stood on the doorstep without the room. Azalea, 
seeing the shadow fall across the floor guessed 
who it was. 

“Oh, you!” she cried happily, “you, of all 
people! Come in, Mrs. Rowantree. Keefe’s 
fallen ill and Aunt Zillah said that you’d be 
just the person to know what to do for him.” 


THE HERMIT THRUSH 


239 


“ I hope I’ll know,” said Mary Cecily in her 
sweet Irish voice, “ but how can we be sure of 
that at all? Still, it’s myself that must confess 
to some experience, what with the rearing of 
the four children and the being so far from a 
medical man. What’s ailing you, Mr. Keefe, 
dear?” she asked with beautiful gentleness, 
stooping over him, sister-fashion, and taking his 
hand in hers. 

And then Azalea knew beyond all doubt! She 
wondered that she had not always known. Each 
had reminded her of the other, and yet with a 
strange stupidity she had not realized it, no 
doubt because it had seemed so certain that they 
must be strangers whose paths never had crossed. 

She tried to be calm, to take the scene as a 
matter of course, but those two who had so 
longed for each other being there, so near, so 
unlike in some ways, yet so like with their sad- 
glad faces, made her put her hands to her eyes 
to hide the sight of them. She almost forgot 
that they did not yet know. She all but forgot 
Keefe’s heart and his need for quiet. 

“ I didn’t know they’d sent for you, Mrs. 
Rowantree, and I’m sorry you’ve been put to the 
trouble,” Keefe was saying. 


240 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ I met Miss Carin down the road and I know 
what a hero you’ve been, lad,” she said under 
her breath. “ It was beautiful — helping a man 
out of his ‘ prison house of pain ’ like that. 
Maybe you’ll have to pay by being laid up for 
a time, but I know you’re thinking to yourself 
that it’s worth it.” 

Keefe nodded. “ If poor Panther gets 
well — ” 

“ Ah, I hope for that — I pray for that the 
poor man! ” 

Keefe said nothing more. He seemed very 
weary. Mary Cecily sat beside him, looking 
down at him, and he, half-closing his eyes, 
watched her changeful face. Azalea had sunk 
on the doorstep and sat there, her heart beating 
so she thought the others must hear it. All her 
thoughts and wishes were pouring out toward 
them, willing them to speak. 

Somewhere in the woodland a hermit thrush 
sent out its liquid, lovely note. It seemed above 
all sounds in the world, the one that suited the 
moment. 

“ Why don’t they speak? Why don’t they 
speak?” Azalea asked the question over and 
over to herself. “ They must speak. They will 


THE HERMIT THRUSH 


241 


be so happy when they know! Oh, how lonely 
they’ve been. Oh, poor dears! But why don’t 
they speak? ” 

It seemed as if the very air palpitated with 
her passionate desire. 

Then: “I wish you were my sister, Mrs. 
Rowantree,” said the boy’s wistful voice. “ I’ve 
just been telling Miss Azalea how I once had a 
sister. Matey, she was called. Isn’t it a sweet 
little name? We were on a ship crossing the sea, 
my sister and my little mother and myself. It’s 
just a little bit of a boy I was — ” 

Azalea heard a low cry of utter happiness, of 
amazed, yet undoubting faith. She slipped from 
the room and ran down the path. Her tears fell 
as she fled, but her heart was singing. 

The hermit thrush kept up its deep and tender 
song, but Azalea was certain that the words 
being spoken in that room were more beautiful 
and wonderful by far. 


CHAPTER XIV 

THE REBEL 

Azalea never forgot how quietly and sweetly 
that night came down. The mountain, so old — 
older than the peaks of the Rockies or the 
Sierras — lay beneath the stars with an air of 
placidity as comforting to the spirit as great 
music or great words. 

Within the room where Keefe rested, the 
shadows deepened till Azalea and the others 
could no longer see his long form on the sofa, 
nor the little dark head of Mary Cecily bent 
to touch his. 

“ To think of finding some one on the earth 
who really, really belongs to you,” said Azalea. 
“ Oh, Carin, how happy they are! ” 

“ Aren’t they! ” sighed Carin sympathetically. 
“ Oh, dear, Azalea, it makes me homesick for 
papa and mamma. Yet here we are, only half 
through the term of school we promised to 
teach.” 

“You can’t say that it’s been dull,” replied 
242 


THE REBEL 


243 


Azalea with a fluttering little laugh. “Just 
think of all that has happened these short three 
weeks.” 

“ I ought,” murmured Mr. Rowantree, who 
had supped with them, and who sat with them 
now on the porch, “ to be riding home to Con- 
stance and the other children. Paralee kindly 
promised that she would look in on them and 
help them get a bit of something to eat, but now 
I really must be getting along. They’ve never 
been alone before after nightfall.” 

“ You’re going to leave Mrs. Rowantree here 
then?” asked Aunt Zillah. “Oh, that’s good 
of you. I don’t believe those two could bear to 
be separated. I know I couldn’t bear to have 
them.” 

“ Of course they must stay together,” answered 
Mr. Rowantree. “ Ah, what a brave, bright 
little creature my Mary Cecily is, Miss Pace! 
Folks think I don’t appreciate her because Pm a 
lazy, dreamy fool who hasn’t found out how to 
take hold of life over here, but perhaps some 
day I’ll be able to show them that I’m not quite 
such a useless creature as they think me. I know 
my faults better than anyone else knows them; 
and the worst fault of them all is not being 


244 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


properly ashamed of myself. I always was too 
indifferent to what others thought; but since you 
came, Miss Pace, with these fine unselfish girls, 
I — well, I’ve seen myself pretty much as others 
must see me and I confess I don’t like the 
picture.” 

“ Oh, Mr. Rowantree,” cried Aunt Zillah, 
distressed, “ I’m sure — ” 

“ Don’t trouble yourself to say a single polite 
thing, ma’am. Leave me the virtue of my 
repentance. Now, about my little wife’s brother 
in there; he must come to Rowantree Hall 
to-morrow morning. Miles McEvoy can drive 
him over the way he took Panther to the station, 
lying out on the straw in the wagon box. Keefe’s 
a fine fellow, no manner of doubt about that. I 
took to him from the first.” 

“ Have you seen the pictures Keefe has up in 
Mr. McEvoy’s barn? ” asked Aunt Zillah. “ It’s 
a great pleasure and profit to look at them. I’m 
sure when Mr. and Mrs. Carson see them they’ll 
be all for having an exhibit of them down at Lee. 
Many artists come there, as you know, and it’s 
the habit of the tourists to attend their exhibits. 
Sometimes they purchase very freely.” 

“ It would be a fine thing for him if something 


THE REBEL 


245 


of the sort could be done,” said Mr. Rowantree. 
“ My only fear is that Mary Cecily may have 
another philandering male for her to care for. 
That really would be one too many. I declare,” 
he added humorously, “ if it came to that, I 
think it might drive me to work! ” 

Azalea could not repress a little laugh, but 
Carin maintained disapproving silence. She 
liked Mr. Rowantree — nobody could help 
liking him — but she certainly did not approve 
of him, and it was not in her to ease off the situa- 
tion as Azalea could. Azalea had grown up 
among vagabonds, and if she recognized in the 
magnificent Rowantree a new variety of the 
tribe, it only made her tolerant of him. 

“ But you do like to teach, don’t you, Mr. 
Rowantree? ” she said encouragingly. “ Paralee 
met me and told me what a wonderful day it had 
been for them all, and how you came it over that 
poor silly Mr. McIntosh. If only you had been 
given a chance to teach, maybe — ” she hesi- 
tated, not quite seeing where her speech would 
lead her. 

“ Maybe I would have stirred my old stumps, 
eh, Miss Azalea, and not sat around on my gal- 
lery giving a bad imitation of a Southern 


246 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


planter, while my lion-hearted little wife used 
her wit and her strength to provide for the lot 
of us? Well, now, maybe you’re right. And 
that reminds me of a plan we evolved among us 
to-day. That nice red-headed boy — whatever 
his name is — helped shape the notion.” 

He told them the idea of the moonlight school 
and instantly Azalea was on fire with 
enthusiasm. 

“ Oh, Mr. Rowantree,” she cried, “ what a 
splendid thought — what a shining, glittering 
thought! It looks just like a king, dressed in 
white and jewels and with a crown on its head. 
Let’s make it come true. Carin, you’re the won- 
derful one for doing things. All I can do is to 
exclaim, but you go of! and do them. Make this 
come true, Carin ! I couldn’t bear to have it stay 
merely a dream.” 

“ It is a glorious idea,” said Carin. “ I sup- 
pose men and women were quite happy in the 
old days, Mr. Rowantree, in ignorance. My 
father says some of the old, unlettered peasants 
were very wise, and that they had valuable 
knowledge they passed on from father to son. 
But in these days it certainly does seem terrible 
for a man or woman not to know how to read 


THE REBEL 


247 


or write, particularly here in our country where 
everyone should have a chance.” 

“ That’s it,” cried Aunt Zillah, who was a 
great patriot; “ in this glorious country where 
everyone ought to be given a chance! That’s 
the promise we’ve held out to those who come 
to our shores, and it’s that which helps me to 
overlook so many things that seem wrong in our 
dear land. Greedy we may be, and disgraced 
by the scheming and grafting of our politicians, 
but after all, it is here that the ignorant are 
educated and the lowly learn to lift up their 
heads. Oh, I’m proud to be an American, and 
if I had my life to live over again I would devote 
it to some cause that would help on the real 
Americanism. Now, here’s Azalea, God bless 
her. She’s going to work among the mountain- 
eers. What could be more fitting? The child 
has just the nature for the task, and her experi- 
ences have helped her to understand many 
things that a more carefully sheltered girl could 
not have understood.” 

“ I hope she’ll marry happily and keep in her 
own home,” said Mr. Rowantree shortly, while 
Azalea colored scarlet and was grateful for the 
gloom that hid her face. “ I’m an old-fashioned 


248 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


man and I like to see a woman in her home. As 
one of the chief of Miss Azalea’s friends I do 
not desire a public career for her.” 

Even in the dusk Miss Zillah’s head could be 
seen shaking emphatically. 

“ Well,” she said, “ if you’re an old-fashioned 
man, Mr. Rowantree, I suppose I’m what could 
be called an old-fashioned woman. But this I 
will say: I believe in women’s using their 
powers, and I think a woman of intelligence and 
health has the ability to look after her home and 
do something else besides. Azalea may marry 
or she may not, but in any event I hope she’ll 
use her influence and some of her best thought 
in behalf of these poor people ’round about us. 
I’m not a great one for foreign missions — 
although I’ve no objection to them — but I do 
say that life is twice as wonderful and beautiful 
when one helps on her fellow beings. There 
never was a place in the world where missionary 
work was needed more than it is right here in 
our own beloved state of North Carolina. It’s 
a kind and gracious old state, and as beautiful 
as anything that lies beneath the sky, but it’s 
got some poor, neglected members of the human 
family in it, and I’m all for helping them on. I 


THE REBEL 


249 


love Azalea, and have great confidence in her, 
and that’s why I want to see her give herself to 
a useful and important work. If she wasn’t of 
much account, I shouldn’t think that it mattered 
what she did; but she’s of much account, and 
so, if she were mine I would give her to this 
service of her kind as I would give a son, if 
I had one, to fight and die for his country.” 

Miss Zillah’s gentle voice had gathered to 
itself unusual power, and its tones, charged with 
feeling, penetrated to the shadowy room where 
Keefe and Mary Cecily were. Mary Cecily 
laughed softly as she arose from the low chair 
where she had been sitting, and Keefe echoed 
her. Perhaps it struck them as amusing that 
anybody should find it necessary to worry about 
anything now, when suddenly, to them, the 
world seemed so completely right. 

“ How are you in there? ” queried Rowantree. 
“ I’m thinking of driving home the night, Mary 
Cecily, and leaving you here with Keefe.” 

“ Oh, would Mary Cecily be happy away 
from the little ones?” asked Keefe. “ Really, 
I’m much better — fifty percent better, I 
assure you. It’s not necessary for — for my 
sister to stay with me.” His voice caught on 


250 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


the words. “ My sister ” was not easily uttered. 

“ Indeed, I’ve no thought of leaving you, 
brother dear — no thought at all. It’s as my 
husband says. He can ride home to the children ; 
and very good and dear it is of him to think of 
it. The two of us will be along in the morning, 
as you were planning a while back. Be off, 
Bryan dear. There’s only Paralee with the 
children, and she’s strange to them. Tell them 
all that’s happened to me to-day, and let Con- 
stance know that I’m bringing home an own 
uncle — the very one she’d have chosen, I’m 
sure.” 

Azalea drew back into the shadow of the 
house. So in the morning they would be off — 
Keefe and his bright little sister — carrying 
their rich romance with them, and the Oriole’s 
Nest would be the poorer for their going! They 
would be gloriously happy together, telling each 
other all that had happened in the years they 
had been apart. They would go farther, those 
two, with their eager, answering minds, and 
would talk not only of what they had done, 
but of what they had thought and felt. Each 
would be turning out the riches of his mind for 


THE REBEL 


251 


the other to see — holding up their fancies as 
if they were embroidered clothes, and each 
marveling at what the other had to show. They 
would be telling to each other the poetry they 
knew; and Keefe would be making pictures 
while Mary Cecily watched. And how the two 
of them would love the children and admire 
their graceful ways ! Azalea could see how they 
would look, all the family of them, sitting about 
the blazing fire in that queer “ drawing-room.” 
Keefe’s pictures would be put up on the wall — 
the whole place would be plastered with 
them — and they would be talking about this 
one and that, and where it was painted. Then 
they would be singing together, and whistling 
and dancing — heaven only knew what they 
would or wouldn’t do. 

Azalea felt the hot tears of shameless envy 
crowding out from under her lids, and hated 
herself for them. She to help on her fellow- 
men? She to work to add to the goodness and 
happiness of the world, when she grudged these 
two their simple happiness, after so many years 
of tears and longing and heartache? Could a 
more miserable, absurd, abject girl than herself 


252 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


be found anywhere, she wondered. She 
thanked heaven that the friends there beside her 
did not dream how ignoble she was. 

Rowantree meantime had said good night and 
had mounted and ridden away. They watched 
the light of his lantern flitting like a firefly 
among the trees and at last disappearing entirely 
in the night 

The McEvoys came with the milk, and 
lingered to learn the news. As they walked 
away Miss Zillah and her girls could hear their 
soft singsong voices in kindly unison. 

“ They’re right sweet folks,” Miss Zillah 
declared, sighing unaccountably. “ At first they 
did seem queer to me, but now IVe grown to be 
as fond of them as if they were old neighbors. 
They’re a good example of a happy married 
pair, too. I don’t know as I ever heard them 
really disagree about a thing; and though those 
medicine bottles must be a terrible trial to Mr. 
McEvoy, he never says a word about them, 
except, of course, to tease Mis’ Cassie a little 
now and then.” 

“ There haven’t been any new bottles bought 
since we came up here, I notice,” said Carin. “ I 
suppose we’ve kept Mis’ Cassie so busy that she 


THE REBEL 


253 


hasn’t had time to take thought about them.” 

“ I’ve a fine little plan that I’d like to carry 
into execution,” said Miss Zillah. “ Down 
home I have quite a number of pretty mantel 
ornaments I bought long ago when — when I 
thought I was going to have a little home of my 
own. I — I never told you about that, my dears, 
but it seems a good time to do it now, this being 
such a wonderful day for us all. You see, I had 
my wedding clothes made, and I was to marry 
one of the kindest, fairest-minded men that ever 
lived in the world. And he — he was killed, 
dears — thrown from his horse and killed.” 

Azalea had still kept in the background, those 
hurt and lonely tears hot beneath her lids; and 
now, at the story of another’s sorrow, she frankly 
let them fall. Curiously, though, they were not 
so hot and bitter as she had thought they would 
be. 

“ Why, Aunt Zillah,” she murmured, “ we 
never guessed! Yet we might have known. 
There always was something about you so gentle 
and sweet — we might have known that you’d 
had sorrow.” 

“ Few live to my age without having sorrow, 
Zalie, but my sorrow came in my youth, and it 


254 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


took the zest out of life for a time. However, 
it was a sweet sorrow. I’ve always been able 
to keep my lover young and kind in my memory. 
But what I started to say was, that I put away 
and never have used the things I got for that 
little home I meant to have. Now, Pm going 
to write sister Adnah and ask her to send me my 
mantel ornaments. They’re very pretty and 
chaste,” went on Miss Zillah quaintly. “ Little 
shepherds and shepherdesses, piping to each 
other, and all dressed in the softest pink and 
blue, and a clock to match. I even have an 
embroidered cover for the mantel, done in cross 
stitch and in pastel colors to go with the orna- 
ments. If I give these to Mis’ Cassie and induce 
her to put them in the spare room she’ll stick 
the medicine bottles away out of sight.” 

“ They’ll go in that mess under the house,” 
agreed Carin. “ And it will be a grand day for 
the McEvoys when they do. Oh, Aunt Zillah, 
how tired and sleepy I am — almost too tired 
and sleepy to go to bed.” 

“ I feel just the same way,” said Azalea. 
“Yet I hate to leave the night to itself, it’s so 
lovely. Sometimes I think I’ll sleep days and 
keep awake nights, I love the night so much.” 


THE REBEL 


255 


“ Come,” said Miss Zillah with the voice of 
authority, “ don’t be talking nonsense. We will 
get to our beds.” 

So they slipped in softly behind the great 
chimney and the pretty screens to their own 
quaint makeshift of bedroom, leaving Mary 
Cecily on a cot near her brother. The windows 
and doors all stood open to the night, and the 
girls could hear the soft rustlings of the wood 
and the tinkle of the brook. The whippoorwills 
were very distant and their insistent cry sounded 
sweet and mournful, though it could be hector- 
ing enough when it was near at hand. But noth- 
ing was hectoring this night, except that foolish, 
wistful longing in Azalea’s restless young heart, 
because Keefe and Mary Cecily were so happy 
in themselves, and because it was taken for 
granted that she, Azalea, was always to be so 
brave and so eager for service, and was to be a 
missionary to the mountain folk and was never 
to have any joy of her own — no real, selfish, 
glorious joy! Yet only the other day she had 
told Carin how clearly the finger of fate pointed 
to her as one set apart to “ do good.” She would 
never marry, she had said — never, never — 
because she could not marry a “ gentleman ” and 


256 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


because she would marry no one who could not 
lay claim to that name. And they had taken her 
at her word — or at least, they had almost done 
so. She was to be Azalea McBirney, the 
adopted daughter of the mountain folk, the little 
sister to all the unfortunates, and was to live 
apart and be good! 

Azalea lay quite on the edge of her bed, very 
straight and rigid, and looked up at the stars 
through her open window. They were cold, 
unsympathetic looking stars! Azalea had not 
previously noticed how very haughty and remote 
they could appear, or how indifferent they could 
be to the woes and doubts, the frets and flurries 
of one self-centered young person called Azalea 
McBirney — one reneging, horrid young per- 
son, who was secretly going back on all her 
declarations of faith and service, and wanting 
nothing in the world so much as merely to be 
happy! 

Life, decided Azalea, was a puzzle. Once it 
had seemed simple. Some things had plainly 
been right to do; others, as plainly wrong. In 
those days she had believed she had only, at any 
time, to listen to her conscience to find out pre- 
cisely what she ought to do, and therefore what 


THE REBEL 257 

she wanted to do. Because, of course, she 
wanted to do what was right. 

Now she was finding out that there were all 
sorts of matters which were neither right nor 
wrong, about which she had to decide. At 
present she was tormented with a longing to 
share in the joy and in the lives of Keefe and 
Mary Cecily. Something in them called to her. 
Their quick gayety, their sudden sadnesses, their 
caring about pictures and poetry more than 
they did about food or work, or sleep, or any 
usual, dutiful thing, made them seem the very 
kin of her soul. She couldn’t account for it. It 
was merely a fact. She began to understand that 
there might have been something of the sort in 
her own poor little mother. When she took to 
wandering the roads with a cheap “ show ” 
perhaps it was not merely necessity, but some 
half-formed dream of wildness and gayety and 
art that had led her on. She too had loved the 
night and laughter and dancing, singing and 
pictures. Not anything evil — Oh, no, on the 
contrary, only happily, brightly good things, 
things that lightened the heart and set the brain 
moving so that glittering little thoughts shone 
in it like stars in the night. 


258 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


The Carsons, gentle and kind, formal and 
polite, were Azalea’s tried and trusted friends; 
the McBirneys, generous and loving, lived in 
the inner chamber of her heart; Annie Laurie 
was a gallant girl and her own true friend; but 
the soft gay laughter of Keefe and Mary Cecily 
was as fairy bells in her ears, and that night she 
could hear nothing else, it seemed — not even 
the voices of the dear old friends — for the 
tinkling of them. 

So, very stiff, very straight, very miserable, 
she lay upon her edge of the bed and counted 
the hours. Carin, soft as a kitten, curled down 
well in the center of the mattress and slept as 
babies sleep. 

“What’s come over me?” demanded Azalea 
of herself. “ Haven’t I any heart? Haven’t I 
any sense? Can’t I see anybody else happy with- 
out being jealous of them? Am I an Ever- 
lasting Pig? ” 

Haughty and remote stars do not answer 
questions like that. Along in the latter part of 
the night Azalea fell asleep with the question 
hanging in the fast-chilling air. When she 
awoke, the day was already bright, and outside 
the door sounded the voice of Miles McEvoy 


THE REBEL 259 

making arrangements to carry Mary Cecily and 
Keefe to Rowantree Hall. 

Azalea sprang out of bed with decision. Her 
lips were set in a hard little line. 

“ Come, Carin,” she said, “ we mustn’t be 
late to school. Let’s settle down now for a long 
hard pull. We’ll teach school as we never did 
before. There’s only three weeks more ahead 
of us and we mustn’t waste a minute.” 

“ My goodness,” yawned Carin, prettily, 
“ you sound like a call to arms. All right, com- 
rade, I’m with you. Shall we wear our pink 
ginghams? ” 

“What does it matter what we wear?” 
demanded Azalea sternly. “ We’re here to 
teach school. Nobody cares how we look.” 

At that Carin sat up in bed bristling with 
protest. 

“What’s come over you, Zalie?” she 
demanded. “ Of course the children care how 
we look. Looking as well as we can is part of 
our work. You know you’ve often said so your- 
self. But, dear me, why should I worry about 
you, you old Zalie thing? You always look 
lovely.” 

Her friends thought so that morning, cer- 


260 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


tainly. Her eyes were a touch too bright, per- 
haps, her cheeks a shade too red, and there was 
something a little too vivid and throbbing about 
her. Try as hard as she could to keep in the 
background, she could not succeed. 

“ You’re a flaming Azalea this morning, my 
dear,” whispered Mary Cecily just before she 
took her seat beside her brother in McEvoy’s 
wagon for the rough journey to Rowantree Hall. 
Keefe was white and spent-looking, but a glor- 
ious happiness shone in his eyes. 

“ No one is to worry about me,” were his 
words at parting with his friends at the Oriole’s 
Nest. “ If it’s sick I am, it must be with grati- 
tude and bliss. Never will I forget your good- 
ness to me at this house; and now here I am, 
going — home! ” He turned swimming eyes on 
his sister. 

As they drove off he raised himself on one 
elbow — he was reclining on the clean straw in 
the wagon box — to catch one last glimpse of 
“ the flaming Azalea.” But she was out of 
sight — absurdly and irritatingly out of sight. 
There were only Miss Zillah and the golden- 
headed Carin to wave good-bye. 


CHAPTER XV 

NEW HOPES 

“ Only two more little days,” said Azalea, 
“ and then we are through.” 

“ Little days, little days,” sang Carin in a tune 
of her own. “ Only two more little days.” 

“ You use strange expressions,” remarked Miss 
Zillah to her girls. “ Why do you say ‘ little 
days ’ ? Why not 1 short days ’ ? ” 

“ When I love anything,” explained Azalea, 
“ I call it little.” 

“ Then you do love these days? I’m glad. I 
was afraid — ” 

“Aunt Zillah, dear — afraid?” 

“Afraid you were tired, my girl. You’re 
tanned, of course, and so not pale, but you do 
seem rather weary.” 

“ Oh, I’m tired, but school teachers have a 
perfect right to be tired. Six weeks of teaching 
children who haven’t been in the habit of learn- 
ing is rather an order, now, isn’t it, Aunt Zillah? 

261 


262 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


But they’ve learned! All this last week they’ve 
studied like mad trying to get as much as they 
could before school closed. Even that queer, 
cross Mr. McIntosh has worked as if his life 
depended on it.” 

“ His young shote depended on it, you remem- 
ber,” laughed Carin. “ Mr. Rowantree has lost 
his wager with him and will have to hand over 
the brace of ducks.” 

“ So much the worse for Mary Cecily and the 
babies,” sighed Azalea. “ Well, they’ll have 
plenty this year, anyway. The farm is really 
doing well, and it will do better next year now 
that Jake Panther is to take it over to work it 
on shares. He has much more in him than I 
thought at first. Now that he sees there’s some 
hope ahead for the Panthers, he’s a changed 
fellow. He’s roofed the cabin he and his grand- 
mother live in, and set up a doorstep, and put 
out a rain barrel and made all sorts of improve- 
ments. Even Grandma Panther herself doesn’t 
look quite such a witch as she did.” 

“ Oh, but Paralee is the prize,” said Carin. 
“ Since the great news came from Asheville that 
her father would soon be as strong and active as 
ever he was, and since dear Aunt Zillah fitted 


NEW HOPES 


263 


her out in decent clothes, and Jake got his regu- 
lar job, she walks and looks like one who has 
just discovered what it is to be alive.” 

“ I hope it will all come right about her going 
to the Industrial School at Hardinge. You 
wrote to your father and mother about it, Carin, 
didn’t you? ” 

“ Of course I did, Zalie. That’s the third time 
you’ve asked me that question. I’m just as sure 
father will send her away to school as I am that 
he’ll open up the moonlight school and put Mr. 
Rowantree at the head of it. Oh, I do wish those 
dear people of mine would come! There’s so 
much I want to show them and tell them about. 
We must take them over to Rowantree Hall the 
very first thing.” 

“ There’s a large package waiting for me at 
Bee Tree,” said Miss Zillah. “Little Dibblee 
Sikes stopped in to tell me. It must be my 
mantel ornaments. I want to see them on Mis’ 
Cassie’s spare room shelf before we go.” 

“ Come, Carin we must be off,” cried Azalea, 
snatching her parasol from its hook. “ Good- 
bye, Aunt Zillah. Only two more little days — 
little days — little days.” 

“ Silly one!” cried Carin, gathering up her 


264 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


parasol also and trailing after her. “ Why is 
your heart so thistledownish? ” 

“How do I know? How do I know?” 
answered Azalea, still lilting. “ Except because 
I like my little days.” 

It had come to that, simply. She liked her 
little days of hard work. She had broken the 
back of rebellion that memorable day when 
Keefe rode away to his great happiness with his 
sister, and she had been left, bereft of these two 
“ charmers of the world ” as she called them, to 
do her hard stint of work. In a way, Carin 
followed where she led. If Azalea’s enthusiasm 
for the teaching had faltered, Carin’s would 
have faltered too. But Azalea’s devotion to her 
work had steadily increased since she had fought 
her fight with envy and selfishness. She had 
been able to summon to her aid the hidden 
powers of her will, and these had sustained her 
even through these last hot, nerve-wearying days 
of her teaching. Now she felt herself to be the 
victor over that indolent, brooding, indulgent 
self which had more than once in her life tried 
to get the upper hand. 

Not a pupil in the school but had made head- 
way. Some of them had done extraordinarily 


NEW HOPES 


265 


well. Dibblee Sikes had cried whenever the 
last day of school was mentioned ; but he cheered 
up when Azalea assured him that there should 
be a “ moonlight school ” for his mother. 

“ Maybe,” said Azalea, “ it can be arranged 
so that there will be a day school all winter 
long for you youngsters.” 

“ But you’ll not be here, ma’am,” said Dib- 
blee. “ No one can learn us like you and Miss 
Carin. There’s been teachers here that just 
yelled at us and we got so skeered we couldn’t 
learn nothin’. All the fun we had was running 
away from school.” 

“You shan’t have that kind of a teacher, I 
promise,” Azalea assured him. “ Oh, Dibblee, 
if only I knew enough I’d stay right here and 
teach you all the time ; but, you see, I have to go 
to school myself for a long time yet. As I am 
now, I should soon run out of learning and you 
would get ahead of me.” She laughed gayly 
and Dibblee laughed with her. There was 
much laughter about the schoolhouse these days, 
and it was no longer because some one had 
blundered or met with an accident. They 
laughed now because they were happy, because 
their shyness had ceased to be a torment to them, 


266 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


and because they felt that they were more like 
other children — not strange, not some one who 
needed a “ missionary ” to help them on. Of all 
the services that Azalea and Carin had been able 
to perform for them, the bestowing upon them 
of self-esteem was the greatest. Just how this 
result had been attained it would be hard to say. 
Perhaps it was the gentleness, the unfailing 
politeness of their young teachers and their way 
of seeming as “ kin ” to these shy, wild, sus- 
picious young creatures, that had done it. 

“ It’s like teaching squirrels to eat from the 
hand,” Azalea had said more than once to Carin. 

Little had been seen of the Rowantrees and 
nothing of Keefe since the day Keefe went to 
his sister’s home, but they were all, even the 
children, coming to school for the “ last day.” 
The parents of the pupils were coming too, not 
only that they might, like parents the world 
over, swell with pride over the accomplish- 
ments of their offspring, but also because word 
had been sent broadcast that the moonlight 
school would be under discussion. 

There were few flowers left on the mountain 
side by this time, but the prettiest imaginable 
decorations had been contrived with spurge and 


NEW HOPES 


267 


galax, rhododendron leaves and vines. The 
place was really a bower, and the children were 
clean and fresh for the occasion. Indeed, it may 
well be doubted if certain of them had ever been 
so freshened and decorated as on this day. Their 
young teachers had led them to believe that they 
were to expect high festival, and they them- 
selves were in the most charming of their white 
frocks, with the little strings of gold beads 
which Mrs. Carson had given them at 
Christmas. 

The event held one throbbing secret. It was 
a cold secret, although it arose from a warm 
impulse. By the greatest perseverance, Aunt 
Zillah had managed to get a wagonload of ice 
and a number of ice cream freezers up from 
Lee, and now, with the eager aid of the 
McEvoys, delicious ice cream, made after Miss 
Zillah’s own receipt, smooth as satin and tempt- 
ing as nectar, filled the great freezers which 
bulked mysteriously beneath their gunny sack 
wrappings in the shade of the schoolhouse. 
Moreover, in the little cupboard where Azalea 
and Carin kept their stores, were six of the most 
noble, decorative and triumphant cakes which 
Miss Zillah ever had concocted. 


268 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


“ I don’t know much about educating the 
young,” she told the girls and Mis’ Cassie, “ but 
when it comes to feeding them, I understand 
the matter perfectly. Anyone who has reared a 
girl like Annie Laurie is bound to know some- 
thing about that.” She sighed a little, for the 
day held one drawback. She did long to have 
her niece share in the pleasures of this closing 
time and to have her see what had been accom- 
plished, and she had written begging Annie 
Laurie to come, but the girl had replied vaguely. 
Business at the dairy was very brisk. She was 
working early and late to get her hand in com- 
pletely before her valuable assistant, Sam Dis- 
brow, left for Rutherford Academy. 

“ It will be a month yet before he goes,” Aunt 
Zillah had said almost petulantly. “ I should 
have thought Annie Laurie might have spared 
us one day.” 

Mr. and Mrs. Carson were already at Lee, 
having run down to open up the house. 

“ There seems to be no end of things to do,” 
Mr. Carson wrote his daughter. “ Do you 
really think you need us up there, kitten? What 
difference will a few hours make? Have 


NEW HOPES 269 

McEvoy pack up your possessions, and hasten to 
us.” 

“ He doesn’t mean a word of it,” Carin 
declared. “ He and mother are simply dying 
to get up here and see what we’ve done. When- 
ever papa sounds dull and prosy like that I 
know he’s planning something delightful. It 
isn’t normal for him to be stupid. He’s up to 
something, you’ll see.” 

But as the “ last day,” hot, with gay clouds, 
came, and the pupils appeared an hour too early, 
and the Rowantree’s old surrey swung from the 
thick shade of the old wood road, all indicating 
that the hour was at hand, Carin began to have 
her doubts. For once in the history of the world, 
her parents were going to be stupid and sensible 
and economical! They were going to act like 
other people! She was horribly disappointed 
in them, and kept very busy so as not to be alone 
with Azalea and let her see how disappointed 
she was. 

There really was a great deal to do, for the 
parents of the pupils required much polite con- 
sideration. School did not call that morning 
until half after ten o’clock. The time preceding 


270 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


that was spent in talking about the moonlight 
school. There seemed to be a general desire for 
it, although some of the neighbors were exceed- 
ingly shy about expressing their desires. 

“ I’m ready to teach it,” Mr. Rowantree 
declared. “ And I’ll do it for the smallest sum 
possible.” 

The mountain folk may or may not have 
approved of Mr. Rowantree, but there was none 
who doubted his ability to teach them anything 
they might wish to know. Indeed, they always 
had held a great opinion of his bookishness; and 
now they seemed to find him more likable than 
they had imagined possible. His fine and graci- 
ous manners never relaxed, no matter with whom 
he talked, and where they had once been 
offended and annoyed by this display of ele- 
gance, it now seemed different to them, since the 
young teachers, who evidently approved of him, 
had themselves such pretty, fine ways, and yet 
were so simple and friendly. 

The truth was, the folk of Sunset Gap were 
beginning to take a new view of various matters. 
For almost the first time in their existence they 
had been brought into close contact with people 
from the outer world, and their fears and 


NEW HOPES 


271 


prejudices had, in the light of their summer’s 
experience, been dying a rapid and painless 
death. 

The morning hours were given up to a hasty 
review of the work done, that the parents might 
see something of what their children had been 
learning. The young teachers secretly hoped 
that their audience would be so pleased that they 
would take measures to establish a school of 
their own volition. 

Now Azalea and now Carin, flushed, eager 
and slightly tremulous, led on their classes 
through the review of reading, spelling, 
geography, history and arithmetic, while 
crowded about the windows and the platform 
sat the parents, their tanned faces smiling and 
interested. Miss Zillah in her lavender lawn, 
her curls fresh as flowers, beamed upon them 
from the platform. Little Mary Cecily Rowan- 
tree and her brood was at the rear, where her 
young ones could ease their feelings by turning 
somersaults in the school doorway or by chas- 
ing an alarmed bunny. 

Mr. Rowantree moved about from place to 
place, lending an academic aspect to the scene. 
Seated on the low, broad window sill, gay and 


272 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


lithe as a faun, was Keefe, with whom Azalea 
and Carin had been able to exchange little more 
than a nod. He still showed the effects of his 
illness, his eyes looked unnaturally large and his 
mouth was strangely sensitive; but he was more 
charming than ever. He had a sketching pad 
and pencil with him, and in the most engaging 
manner he sketched the heads of those in the 
room. He seemed very far away to Azalea — 
very much a creature of some brighter, lighter 
world than that in which she dwelt. She felt in 
her heart that he was going on to things of which 
she would know nothing — to a successful life 
in some great city. He would know artists and 
the most interesting sort of folks. He would 
live in strange, delightful places ; he would 
travel. She and Sunset Gap would be only a 
fading, picturesque thought in his memory. 

But all that foolish fretting and fuming, she 
told herself severely, was over and done with. 
She was Azalea McBirney, with her chosen 
work to do. Things were as they were; not 
dreams, not charming visions, but just plain 
facts, plain needs, plain work. Moreover, life 
was all the better for being as it was. If the 
body needed simple bread more than candies, so 


NEW HOPES 273 

the spirit needed the plain bread of life more 
than delicacies. 

So she bent brain, spirit, eyes, hands, lips to 
the labor of the day. She determined to draw 
from each of her pupils a quick and eager 
response. She threw herself into the hour’s per- 
formance, and had the profound satisfaction of 
feeling those minds which a few weeks before 
had been so aloof, so chilled, so closed, open to 
her influence as flowers open to the sun. 

From time to time more neighbors came and 
clustered about the windows without, leaning 
on the sills and listening to the program. 
Neither Azalea nor Carin paid much attention 
to these soft comings and goings, these quiet 
unobtrusive movements of the people without 
there in the heat of the changing day. There 
was some fear of rain; Azalea heard the people 
whispering about it; she herself noted how the 
light in the room changed from bright sunlight 
to soft shadow. She hoped, of course, that the 
rain would hold off ; and yet she couldn’t help 
thinking how charming Keefe would look there 
on the window ledge, with the silver rain fall- 
ing between him and the trees ; and she remem- 
bered that first wonderful day at the Rowantrees, 


274 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


when they all had eaten on the gallery with the 
rain making a silver curtain between them and 
the rest of the world. 

It was time for the nooning — the famous 
nooning that was to hold Aunt Zillah’s sur- 
prise — and Azalea was just bringing the 
exercises to an end, when she saw an 
extraordinary sight. Carin, the proper, the cor- 
rect, the ladylike, who had been seated on the 
platform near an open window, was suddenly 
seen to plunge through the window like the most 
madcap child in the whole school. Not a sound 
came from her, but with her bright hair 
tumbling about her from the violence of her 
leap to the ground, she was speeding down the 
path. What was worse and more astonishing, 
Aunt Zillah, the very mirror of what was decor- 
ous, had looked, and was now speeding after 
her, only she was swung down from the window 
by the sympathetic Keefe, who apparently had 
the key to her extraordinary conduct. In spite 
of the titter of delight that shook the school, 
Azalea preserved her dignity, but out of the 
corner of her eye she saw Mr. and Mrs. Carson, 
and Carin homing to them like a swift dove; 


NEW HOPES 275 

and Annie Laurie running with outstretched 
arms to meet her Aunt Zillah. 

Azalea didn’t say even in her inmost heart: 
“ And there’s nobody for me.” She was through 
with that sort of “ grumping ” and did not mean 
ever to give way to it again. Besides, in a day 
or two she would be driving up the dear familiar 
road with Pa McBirney, and coming upon the 
well-loved clearing with the little house that was 
her home, and listening to Jim’s questions, and 
feeling Ma McBirney’s kind eyes on her, and 
then she would go creeping up to her own sweet, 
odd room in the loft that looked up the mountain 
side, and she would be happy. Yes, of course 
she would be happy. That was her life. Every 
one had his own life. Mary Cecily had hers 
and Keefe had his, and Carin had hers — 

All of this time she was talking, was neatly 
and cheerfully bringing the exercises to a close, 
and her well-trained pupils were doing their 
best to give her their attention and not to let 
their eyes wander down the road to view the 
interesting scenes taking place there. 

“ Miss Pace,” said Azalea clearly, “ has a 
luncheon prepared for you which you are all 


276 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


asked to help prepare in the grove. Everyone 
is invited — everyone. No one is to go away.” 

No one had the slightest intention of going 
away. What was the use of doing that when 
already Paralee and Mis’ Cassie and Mis’ Sikes 
and others of the neighbors who had been pressed 
into service, were bringing forth platters of sand- 
wiches and cold meat loaf and pickles and salad; 
and Miles McEvoy was starting a fire among 
the well-blackened stones of a rude fireplace in 
the schoolyard, and Mrs. McIntosh was mixing 
coffee in the huge pot. 

“ And now,” said Azalea to herself, “ it is the 
moment for me to go and meet my friends.” 

She walked out of the schoolroom door quite 
properly, meaning to remember every step of 
the way that she was only the schoolteacher, 
and not Carin with loving parents, nor Aunt 
Zillah with a devoted niece — but just at her 
most dignified and self-conscious moment she 
was caught about the waist by Annie Laurie’s 
strong arms and lifted entirely off her feet. Yes, 
right there before her pupils and all the people 
she had been hoping to impress with her dis- 
cretion, was swung quite clear of the ground and 


NEW HOPES 111 

hugged till she literally heard a little crack in 
her ribs! 

“ I suppose you thought I wasn’t coming up 
here to see how things were going on, didn’t 
you, you funny little old schoolma’am? ” 
demanded Annie Laurie’s strong bright tones. 
“Me — as inquisitive as a house cat — not to 
come nosing! That’s too ridiculous. Well, here 
I am, anyway! ” 

Here she very much was, tall and glowing and 
quite grown up in her pretty blue linen, with 
her wide hat with the cornflowers. And here 
were Mr. and Mrs. Carson, ready to greet Aza- 
lea as if she were almost their own. Oh, it was 
good to have Mrs. Carson’s arm about her 
waist — good to be in the encircling gentleness 
and protection of her calm love! 

But there really wasn’t a moment to waste in 
talk. Azalea told them that. Her mind swung 
back to its duties. 

“ After luncheon,” she said, “ we’ll visit.” 

Carin remembered her responsibilities, too; 
and Aunt Zillah was suddenly in a hospitable 
flurry. But there really was no call for haste. 
Sunset Gap was not used to it. There always 
had been, in the experience of its inhabitants, 


278 " AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


plenty of time for everything. There was time to 
eat, certainly. People sat about in little groups 
and partook of Aunt Zillah’s delicious repast, 
and they waited on each other graciously, for- 
getting, it seemed, all about their shyness and 
their terrific pride and their old quarrels. 

But the great moment came when the gener- 
ous freezers yielded up their strange confection, 
and for the first time in their lives the folk at 
Sunset Gap knew the taste of that odd little 
miracle among foods, ice cream in August 
weather. Some tasted it suspiciously; some ate 
it injudiciously; some knew it for a good thing 
from the first second; some doubted till they 
had sampled the second saucer; but all realized 
that this would be an occasion to tell of; and 
that if the truth of the statements were doubted, 
they had witnesses to prove that they had eaten 
frozen food the hottest day of the year. 

That afternoon came the “ exercises ” and like 
last day exercises in schools the world over, 
what they involved of anguish, triumph, amuse- 
ment and disaster it would take long to relate, 
and the record would be of no interest save to 
those who had suffered and rejoiced with the 
day’s events. 


NEW HOPES 


279 


They were shortened — fortunately, no doubt 
— by the approach of the storm which had 
threatened all day. The watchers without grew 
restless; the horses stamped and tugged at their 
hitching, and Azalea, bringing the session 
quickly and happily to an end, begged for one 
second’s hearing for Mr. Carson. 

“ He has something very important to say to 
you,” she cried, her voice reaching out above 
the heads of her restive audience. “ You must 
listen, because it is something that may make all 
your future lives happier.” She smiled at them 
beautifully, and they paused, half risen from 
their seats to listen. 

Charles Carson had but a brief word. 

“ The moonlight school of which you have 
been talking, friends, will be opened here next 
month. It will hold every night that the moon 
shines the year round for the next twelve months. 
Each person who enters has the privilege of 
paying what he can for his instruction. If he 
cannot pay, he shall have the instruction never- 
theless. Mr. Rowantree, your neighbor, a 
scholarly man and one whom many a university 
would be proud to have on its list of teachers, 
will be your leader. May it be for your great 


280 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


good and joy! I believe it will be, for no joy in 
this world is greater than the joy of knowledge.” 

“Three cheers for Mr. Carson,” cried Keefe. 
“ Come now! Whoop — whoop — hurrah! ” 

The neighbors and the children gave the cheer 
heartily if somewhat awkwardly, and when 
Keefe called “ Three cheers for your teachers, 
Miss Carson and Miss McBirney,” they became 
rather lustier; and when he came to, “Three 
cheers for Miss Pace,” remembering the dainties 
she had provided, they were aroused to a hoarse 
enthusiasm. They wanted to be polite; to shake 
hands; to say thank you; but the storm was 
muttering. Azalea waved them all away 
laughingly. 

“Why say good-bye?” she cried. “We’ll 
never forget you and you’ll never forget us, but 
we mustn’t stop to talk about it. The storm’s 
coming. Run — or stay.” 

The thunder drowned her voice. 

“ Come, Azalea,” cried Keefe; “ don’t stop to 
lock up. Some of the people will be wanting to 
stay in the schoolhouse, probably. Here, put 
on my coat and run.” 

“ But you mustn’t run, Keefe,” warned Aza- 


NEW HOPES 281 

lea. “ Your heart — mustn’t you be careful of 
that? ” 

The boy laughed lightly and held out his 
hand, and Azalea, taking it, felt herself flying 
along through the darkening paths of the 
woods. 

Safe in the Oriole’s Nest, the Carsons, the 
Rowantrees, the Paces and Keefe and Azalea, 
made many plans that evening of wild summer 
rain. It had been arranged that they were all 
to be accommodated for the night between the 
McEvoys’ and the cottage, so since none was 
leaving, there was no need for haste. Not a 
person there was of the sort who feels that night- 
fall bids him to bed. They did as they pleased 
with their day and their night, and this night 
they wished to talk. The little Rowantrees, 
Gerald and the weary Constance, Moira and 
Michael, the twins, were nested in the ham- 
mocks and on the couches, and in the lightning- 
pierced gloom, with the storm crashing and 
thundering about them, the others sat long, 
talking over each other’s affairs with a frank- 
ness which might not have been easy under 
other circumstances. 


282 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


Keefe made it known that he was going to 
New York, taking his summer’s product of pic- 
tures with him, to “ try himself out.” He had 
something to work for now; there was some zest 
to life; he wanted to make a success of himself 
for the sake of Mary Cecily and the children. 
Annie Laurie was to attend to her dairy, and 
being now ready to take up advanced studies, 
was to study the University Extension Course 
by herself. 

“ Miss Parkhurst, your governess,” said Mrs. 
Carson to Carin, “ is not coming back, my dear. 
She is to live nearer her mother and sister and 
teach school. That means that our plans for 
you must be changed. We shall send you to the 
Roanoke Academy for Young Ladies. After 
you have had two years there you may take up 
your study of painting, if you wish to do so, in 
some art school. In the meantime, you will have 
art instruction at the school.” 

“ But, mamma,” cried Carin, “ that means — 
why, that means that Azalea and Annie Laurie 
and I will not study together any more. Why, 
it means breaking up the Triple Alliance! ” 

“ Never worry about changes,” said Mrs. Car- 
son in her silvery voice. “ It is the changes that 


NEW HOPES 


283 


make life interesting. Good has always come 
to you, Carin, and good will continue to come. 
Annie Laurie has already chosen what she wishes 
to do. We have decided what we think best 
for you. There remains only Azalea to care 
for. How is it with you, Azalea? What do 
you wish to do? ” 

“ I mean,” said Azalea, her heart trembling 
a little in spite of her efforts to be calm and 
philosophic, “ to prepare myself to take charge 
of the mountain industries at Lee. Just how I 
can best fit myself for this work I do not know. 
I mustn’t desert Mother McBirney, must I? I 
can’t put any expense on my dear family, but I 
can stay at home and learn weaving of Mother 
McBirney and basket-making of dear old Hay- 
stack Thompson, and go to Jug Town and find 
out how to make pottery. I can pick up my 
education, don’t you see? ” 

She sat tall, slight and very girlish-looking, 
by the table on which rested the reading lamp. 
Her vivid face, thrown into relief by the soft 
glow, had, to all those present, a sweet and 
gracious familiarity. They loved her, wanted 
her with them, wanted her to help them make up 
the sum of good things that is called “ home.” 


284 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


There was not one person there who wanted to 
spare her, yet here she was with her little 
declaration of independence. 

“ Come up to New York,” whispered Keefe, 
fascinated, “ and study at the School of Design.” 

Azalea shook her head. 

“ I’d like to make my own way,” she said 
valiantly. “It — it would make me happier 
than anything else. I’d rather not be sent any- 
where. I’d rather cut my own path.” 

“ So proud,” smiled Mr. Carson whimsically. 
“ Would it hurt you to accept help from those 
who love you, Azalea? ” 

“ Is it pride?” asked Azalea with a bright 
thoughtfulness. “ I’m sure I don’t think it is. 
I want to use my own will, Mr. Carson, to see 
what I can spin out of myself. If it should 
happen to be a wonderful silver web how pleased 
I would be! ” 

“ Oh, you’re so young, Azalea, dear,” mourned 
Miss Zillah. “ Don’t go to taking too much 
risk. Don’t be too independent.” 

“No, don’t, Azalea,” pleaded Carin. “Let 
papa and mamma make some plan for you.” 

“ They understand me better than you do, 
Carin love,” said her friend. “ They know what 


NEW HOPES 


285 


a joy it is to make one’s own plans and carry 
them out. Annie Laurie knows, too, don’t you, 
dear? 75 

Annie Laurie nodded her fine ruddy head. 
She knew. Keefe knew too, for he was like an 
eagle in his love of freedom. They all gave 
way before Azalea finally. She was no longer a 
little girl to be petted and given presents to, and 
to be consoled for her orphanage by the hos- 
pitality they could offer. She was a young 
woman, poor, united to humble people, gifted 
with a strange, fine talent — a talent for living 
and for making things seem rich and wonder- 
ful — and it was their business to let her have 
her way. She had grown up during the summer. 
She realized it herself, and knew as the rest of 
them could not, what the influences had been 
which had brought that transformation to pass. 
Henceforth, she would have her own way to 
make, her own sorrows to endure, her own 
peculiar joys to seek. Until now one hand after 
another had guided her; she had clung to skirts, 
so to speak. But she had grown past that; she 
must walk alone. 

She looked about her at the rude but charming 
room, and at the faces of her kind and dear 


286 AZALEA AT SUNSET GAP 


friends. She seemed to see herself, too, as she sat 
there, a girl with a curious past and a strange 
present. As for her future! She shrugged her 
shoulders gayly — as her poor little dead mother 
sometimes had done — and spread out her hands 
with a wide gesture. 

“ It’s to be Azalea for herself,” she said with 
a brave little laugh. “ Wish her luck! ” 












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